


Juniper Berries

by WingedQuill



Series: Juniper Verse [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Blindness, Ciri thinks that Geralt is dead, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Good Parent Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, POV Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Post-Season/Series 01, Self-Discovery, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Tags Contain Spoilers, That's how it is, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion, look sometimes a family is two witchers a sorceress and a runaway princess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 49,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22826725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Ciri is forced to go on the run when Nilfgaard catches up with her and Geralt. When she is claimed by another witcher via the Law of Surprise, she thinks destiny must be playing a cruel joke on her. She is still mourning Geralt, after all. How dare another try to replace him?(Meanwhile, Juniper—or Jaskier, as he was once known—is kicking himself for making the exact same mistake that Geralt made all those years ago. But maybe a child surprise is exactly what he needs to help him move on from his lost humanity. And the girl seems to be dealing with her own brand of grief. Perhaps he can help her.)
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Juniper Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655494
Comments: 874
Kudos: 1956
Collections: Ashes' Library





	1. Chapter 1

Nilfgaard attacked in the middle of the night.

Ciri woke to Geralt shaking her shoulder, his eyes wide and frantic, steel sword already clutched in his hand. The sound of hooves was all around them, crashing through the undergrowth.

“You need to run,” Geralt said.

And it was Cintra, all over again, her grandmother bleeding and dying and telling her to leave.

“No,” she said, again, history repeating itself with her numb lips. “I’m not leaving you.”

He pressed a dagger into her hands. Yanked his medallion off his neck and gave that to her too.

“Stay safe,” he told her. _“Go.”_

He pulled her to her feet and towards an opening in the trees.

“I don’t hear anyone coming from that direction,” he told her. “Start running. And keep running until your legs give out.”

“Come with me.”

He shook his head. Squeezed her shoulder.

“Need to hold them off,” he said. “Keep them away from you.”

Her life was falling apart again and she had no way of stopping it.

“I love you,” she said because he was her _family,_ and she had never told him that she loved him, and she didn’t think she’d get another chance.

He smiled at her, tight and angry and _scared._

“I love you too,” he said. “Now run.”

The first Nilfgaardian soldier burst through the trees. Geralt turned to meet him with a snarl. And Ciri was many things. The lion cub of Cintra. A child of surprise. A tiny piece of chaos waiting to erupt. But if there was one thing she wished she wasn’t, it was a coward.

So she ran.

She darted into the woods, the sound of steel chasing her into the darkness. Tossed a frantic glance over her shoulder. Geralt was holding his own against five Nilfgaardians, but more were streaming into the clearing, and she knew it was only a matter of time before he was overrun. He was fighting furiously, sword scattering red across the earth, but it was his last stand. He was going to die, just like her grandmother, and she couldn’t stop it, and—

A scream was building in her throat. She choked it down, trapping it safely in her lungs, where it thrashed and fought like a wild thing to escape. She could take out every soldier in the clearing, she knew that. But her chaos killed everything that heard it, and Geralt was in range.

And it was stupid, and selfish, but if he was going to die she didn’t want it to be by her voice. Chaos clawed at her throat, a monster with no outlet, and she ran. The already dark woods were growing blurry with her tears and soon enough the sound of the battle was swallowed up by the muffled crash of leaves. _Keep running until your legs give out,_ Geralt had said. Branches whipped against her face and thorn bushes picked at her arms but she heeded his words. _Keep running, keep running, keep—_

She ran until the sky grew light, until her heart burned hot in her mouth, and then she keeled over on the ground and _screamed._ The trees cracked and shook around her. The birds went silent. She waited for them to start singing again but they did not.

She was alone.

Okay. Okay. She knew how to be on her own. She had survived for months before she had found Geralt, hadn’t she? She could do it again. Water, shelter, fire, food. Just get those four things and you can survive anything.

She swiped a hand over her eyes, sniffling back a sob. Geralt would want her to—

He would want—

He had been her destiny, and she had been his, and their destiny had been—what? To travel together for a year, and then for one of them to die horribly protecting the other?

She buried her head in her knees and gave herself over to grief, let herself cry without abandon for a long hour. Clear away the pain bursting in her stomach and heart and lungs. When the storm passed she was left gasping in a pile of dead and moldering leaves. Clearer. Calmer. Number.

She got to her feet and stumbled onwards. Water. She had to find water, especially with so much of it wasted on crying. After only a few steps, she stumbled over the body of a rabbit. It was twisted up on the ground, like it had fallen mid-leap. Blood was trickling out of its long ears, but other than that, there was no sign of an injury.

She put a hand on her throat. The scream lingered beneath her skin.

Well. That was food sorted.

***

Her days fell into an endless cycle of trudging through the woods, screaming rabbits to death and slurping up water wherever she could find it. And not sleeping, at least not if she could help it.

The first night after—after Geralt, she had fallen into an uneasy rest in a small hollow in the ground, underneath a leafy tree. And then she was back in the clearing, hovering at the edge of the forest. Watching helplessly as one of the Nilfgaardians slipped under Geralt’s sword and drew a knife across his throat.

He hit the ground with a gargled scream and she awoke, panting and gasping in the dark. She had dreamed of Cintra burning countless times, and Geralt had always been there when she woke. He wasn’t the best at comfort, at least not of the conventional sort. But he had sat with her, as she shivered off the memories, and told her stories of his past hunts. Convinced her that she was safe with him, inch by inch.

And now she had no one.

***

She stumbled into a town eventually, dirty and wild-eyed. A woman saw her and coaxed her into the local inn, where the concerned innkeeper asked her where she had been.

“My father and I were attacked by bandits,” she said. “I—he told me to run, but I don’t think—I don’t think he made it.”

The innkeeper clucked softly, sadly, and pressed a bowl of stew into her hands.

“Well you’re here now,” he said. “And thank the gods for that. Your father would be glad to see you safe.”

_He’d be glader to be alive,_ she wanted to snarl, but she nodded and accepted the stew. Stay polite and quiet and easy to deal with. Nothing like a princess.

“I’m sure there’s someone around here who’ll take you in,” the innkeeper said. “The blacksmith, he and his wife have been trying for a child for ages, maybe—”

She tuned out the innkeeper and the woman who found her as they discussed who would want the poor, orphan child. Stared at her stew with bitter tears gathering in her eyes. She didn’t _want_ to be some poor, orphan child, growing up with a blacksmith or a tailor or a baker. She wanted adventure, she wanted to fight, she wanted _Geralt back._

She wanted to scream.

She swallowed another bite of stew to occupy her mouth. And if the strange, silent orphan slipped out of the inn and into the woods just as the first rays of dawn were breaking over the sleepy town then well. That was just the way these things went sometimes, wasn’t it?


	2. Chapter 2

The days stretched into weeks and she kept walking, hiding in the woods for as long as she could. But winter was gathering in the air, and after the third day in a row waking up covered in frost, she knew that she needed to start sleeping indoors.

She slipped into and out of towns, pulling the doe-eyed orphan routine until some kindly woman gave her a warm bed for the night. It never took very long. She wore Geralt’s medallion under her dress, against her heart, just in case the do-gooder was a monster. She slept with a knife under her pillow, just in case they were a monstrous human. And then, before they could question her too much, get too attached to her, start to see her as the daughter they’d never had, she was gone. Onto the next town, the next inn, the next kindly stranger.

She couldn’t go on like this.

And she wasn’t sleeping enough.

Her brain had stopped tormenting her with her cowardice. Her running, Geralt falling to a well-placed knife. Instead, it gathered up all her agonized pondering of _what could I have done?_ and showed her the answers in bright, violent color.

Three weeks after, curled up in a hayloft of a poor but pleasant farmer.

She didn’t run. She stayed by Geralt’s side and held her head high and told them _here I am. You have me. Let him go._ And Geralt snarled and fought but they quickly overwhelmed both him and her. They lifted her up onto a furiously snorting horse and they pinned Geralt to the ground. He writhed like a wild thing, twisting around to look at her with frantic golden eyes.

And then they cut his throat.

She screamed and she screamed and the Nilfgaardians fell like cast-aside dolls.

Four weeks after, dozing on the window seat in a noblewoman’s bedchamber.

She didn’t run. She held a dagger to her own throat. Nilfgaard wanted her alive, and she could use that against them. _Swear that you will let him live,_ she said. _Swear by all the gods and you hold dear._ And chaos curled in her voice, making her words vibrate with power.

 _We swear it,_ said one of the soldiers, lifting her up onto the same dark horse.

 _I’ll hunt you down,_ howled Geralt, pinned down again. _I’ll tear you to shreds. I’ll find you._

_You’ll find us, will you witcher?_

The soldier leaned down over him, grabbed a hunk of his hair.

 _We can’t have that,_ he said, and then there was a flash of silver and Geralt’s scream broke the air in half. He clawed frantically at his face, fingers pressed against the bloody holes where his eyes used to be.

 _No!_ shouted Ciri as they bore her away, leaving Geralt crumpled on the ground. _You promised, you swore, you—_

 _We swore that we would let him live,_ said the soldier. _We said nothing about leaving him whole._

She bolted awake and turned over the side of the window seat, vomiting up her dinner in thick ropes. Because that had felt so real, and what if it was one of her visions, one of her dreams-that-weren’t-dreams? What if she had run, and the furious Nilfgaardians hadn’t been content with killing Geralt? What if they had blinded him and left him for dead in the woods?

The lady woke, gasping and shrieking, sobbing about Ciri ruining the carpet.

“I let you into my house out of the goodness of my heart!” she screamed. “And this is how you repay me?”

She grabbed Ciri by the hair and dragged her off the window seat. Ciri stumbled through the vomit, making the carpet even worse, but the furious noblewoman didn’t seem to notice. She yanked her out of the room and marched her down the hall, cursing ungrateful orphans all the while.

She pulled the front door open and a gust of snow blew in.

“I’ll freeze,” Ciri said. Not a plea. Just a fact. Let this woman know what she was doing to her.

“Not my problem.” And with that, she was hurled through the door and into the blizzard. The door slammed shut behind her, lock sliding into place with a loud thud. She shifted from foot to foot, wrapping her arms around her.

The noblewoman’s home was way up on a hillside, far away from the nearest town. She liked to be above it all, literally and figuratively. But that posed a problem for Ciri. Could she make it all the way down? The wind whipped past her face, shoveling snow down her collar. She would have to try.

She set off for the town on trembling legs, not sure if the shaking was a result of the cold or the lingering nightmare. Not for the first time, she considered heading back into the woods. She could try and retrace her steps, find Geralt again. She had found him that first time, after all, destiny pulling them together like magnets. And she knew that the odds were so, so low, knew that she would likely just be consigning herself to a slow, cold death. But there was a nagging pull in her heart, demanding that she at least _try._

 _Try and find a body,_ the dream whispered. _Rotting into the mud. Maggots eating at his eyes._

She shoved aside her thoughts and trudged on. The snow was piling into her boots, rubbing ice into her shins. Frost gathered at her eyelashes and stuffed up her nose, turning every breath into a razor’s drag. Her fingertips were growing numb. She was racing her own body, she realized, racing her own tolerance. The winter was battering her down bit by bit, tugging at her limbs and bidding her to lie down in the snow and rest awhile. She couldn’t even see the lights of the town in the flurry of white. She didn’t even know if she was going in the right direction.

The house rose out of the storm like a lighthouse.

It was a small hut, light spilling from its windows, catching the snowflakes and making them glitter like stars. It seemed warm. Inviting. The noblewoman’s groundskeeper lived here, if she had to guess. And, though Ciri was _done_ with kindly strangers, she regrettably needed them at that moment. So she fell against the door, pounding frantically at it with her fists.

It swung open and she toppled inside. The warm air of the cottage burned in her lungs and seared the skin of her face. The woman who had opened the door made a shocked noise and knelt down beside Ciri, pressing a hand against her cheek.

“You’re cold as ice,” she gasped. “Come, sit by the fire.”

She half-led, half-carried Ciri to a chair and piled her with furs until she was swathed in a cocoon of warmth. Her fingers prickled with the heat and she flexed them, relieved to find that they still obeyed her. She had heard stories of men who got caught in the cold too long, and who lost their hands as a result. The woman leaned down to inspect her nose and ears, frowning to herself.

“You should be safe from frostbite,” she said. “But what were you doing out in the cold?”

“I was a guest of the lady,” Ciri said. “But she threw me out.”

“Into this weather—?! No, I don’t know why I’m shocked. That’s typical of her.”

The woman scowled and turned to the pot of stew that hung over the fire, ladling out a portion into a large bowl.

“She made my husband go and check on her topiaries, can you believe it?” she grumbled. “It’s like she doesn’t realize that we’re human beings.”

She pressed the stew into Ciri’s hands.

“Eat,” she said. “You’re skin and bone, and it’ll warm you.”

“Thank you.”

“These are dark times, girl. We need to look out for each other, or what hope do we have?”

She sank into the chair next to her.

“My husband should be home soon,” she said. “He’s a good man. You can stay with us as long as you need.”

Until the storm let up, then. She nodded. Stay quiet and small and don’t show a personality, and then they won’t hate you, but they won’t want to keep you. It was a trick that had served her well.

The woman sighed.

“The world has hurt you, hasn’t it?” she said, more to herself than Ciri.

Before Ciri could even think about answering, the door cracked open.

“Mildred!” shouted a man from outside. “You find any stray dogs or wandering calves in this storm?”

Mildred looked at Ciri, raising an eyebrow.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Good! Good. I have a gentleman here who—well, he saved my life, and we don’t have much, so I offered him Law of Surprise.”

And she hoped. For one fleeting, precious moment, she thought that destiny must have been on her side again, pushing her back to Geralt. Playing out a bit of irony that would ultimately end in her favor.

But then the door opened wider, and Mildred’s husband stepped into the cottage. Next to him was a man. A witcher, going by the blood-crusted swords and bright golden eyes.

But it wasn’t Geralt.

Mildred gestured wordlessly at Ciri. The witcher turned towards her, eyes widening as he realized that he had claimed, not a dog or a cow, but a child. And Ciri decided that Geralt had been right all along.

Fuck destiny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Ciri is really destiny's plaything, and I am hamming that up to a probably-absurd level. But you know, maybe now she doesn't have to sleep in haylofts like a gremlin, so that's good.


	3. Chapter 3

The realization swept over her like a cold wind. This confirmed it. Geralt was dead.

Destiny had let go of her previous—owner? Carer? Parent. Geralt had gone where fate could not follow, and the bond of surprise had been broken. But destiny was dissatisfied. And so it had sent another witcher across her path.

She felt emptied out of everything, numb and tired, like she had just run for miles. She stared at the fire until she could convince herself that the burning in her eyes was just pain from the light. Mildred dragged her husband into the chair across from Ciri, worrying over the cut on his forehead.

“It’s just a scratch,” he told her. “I’ll be fine.”

The witcher cleared his throat. Ciri turned her head, flicking her eyes up to meet his. She did not allow her face to change, didn’t allow the grief to show in her expression. Just studied the witcher like he was an unfamiliar lord at court.

He was a tall man, slim but muscular. His hair was a medium brown, scraggly and unevenly cut, brushing the tops of his shoulders. Several jagged scars ran across his face, crossing the bridge of his nose, splitting the top of his lip, and barely missing his left eye. Claw marks, if she had to guess. An old injury, poorly healed, but healed.

His fingers twitched against his side. Nervous.

“I’m Juniper,” he said. His voice was low and smooth, softer than she expected. “What’s your name?”

She flicked her eyes back to the fire. One log was balanced atop another, and the bottom one was quickly charring into coals. An uneasy equilibrium, one that would soon be broken. Mildred tutted.

“Good luck with that, love,” she said. “I’ve barely gotten a handful of words out of her.”

 _I’m sitting right here,_ Ciri wanted to snap.

“Are you hungry?” Mildred asked Juniper, leaning back from her husband. “There’s plenty to go around.”

“Thank you,” Juniper said. His voice wavered a bit.

“No need to sound so startled. You saved Roger’s life. The least we can do is feed you.”

She bustled around the fire.

“If you ask me, people aren’t nearly grateful enough to you witchers,” she said. “Without you, we’d be overrun. Without you, there’d be thousands of lives cut short.”

Juniper took the offered stew, blinking down at it like it was a pile of rubies.

“‘Toss a coin’ and all that,” laughed Roger. A lump rose in Ciri’s throat. “Except we don’t have much coin to go around.”

“And so you gave me a child,” Juniper said, raising a gnarled eyebrow. There was something panicked in his voice, a calm just on the verge of breaking.

“Destiny gave you a child,” corrected Roger, leaning over and thumping Juniper on the shoulder. “We gave you dinner.”

The bottom log dissolved into a whirl of sparks and broken wood, and the top one came crashing down. Mildred yelped, hand flying to her heart. A smile flashed unbidden across Ciri’s lips.

“Ah-ha!” Mildred cried. “So you are paying attention.”

She bent down next to Juniper’s ear and spoke in a not-whisper.

“Looks like your new daughter has a mean sense of humor.”

“Don’t call me that.”

The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. Juniper’s head snapped up from the stew. The three adults froze, staring at her like they’d forgotten she was there. Fuck it. She had ruined the ‘silent, scared orphan’ image, might as well tell them what she really thought of them. She climbed out of the chair, extracting herself from Mildred’s mountain of furs, and stormed over to Juniper.

“I will go with you,” she said. “Because destiny demands it. But I am _not_ your child. My father is dead and I will not have another.”

Chaos curled in her vocal cords, and she choked it back, because these people were annoying and condescending, but they didn’t deserve to die.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Juniper said. Still soft. Still low. Like her fury hadn’t even rattled him. “A witcher’s lifestyle is no place for a child. I can give up my claim of surprise—”

“That’s not how the Law of Surprise works,” snapped Ciri, because Geralt had tried that and look how well that turned out. She wasn’t about to go running around the Continent for another five months, only to run into Juniper in some middle-of-nowhere patch of forest.

“You claimed it, so now you’re stuck with me,” she continued. “If you don’t like it, maybe next time think twice before you accept non-monetary payment.”

 _Witchers take coin,_ Geralt had told her. _And nothing else. For good reason._

 _You’re saying I wasn’t good payment?_ Ciri had replied. It was a light question, teasing, but with something serious and breakable beneath. Those had been the early days, when she was still trying to figure Geralt out.

Geralt had shaken his head, and offered her a brush so that they could groom Roach together.

 _Not at all,_ he had said. _But I don’t want you claiming Law of Surprise when we save some farmer from a selkimore. With our luck, we’d wind up lugging a litter of piglets around the Continent._

That was the first time she had laughed with him. The memory ached like a half-healed bruise.

Juniper tilted his head. Considering her. She wondered what he saw. A scared child? Some little girl who didn’t know what she was talking about? She set her jaw and met his gaze head on, refusing to be seen as weak.

He broke the stare-off first.

“Alright,” he said. “You can come with me.”

“You best take good care of her,” Mildred said, taking the bowl out of Ciri’s numb fingers and immediately going back to the fire to refill it. “If I hear any stories about a little girl getting mauled by a Drowner, I will track you down, witcher. Don’t think I won’t.”

She spoke like Ciri so often did. Light and joking, something heavy underneath. Juniper seemed to recognize the two levels of her speech, leaning forwards and holding her gaze with an unwavering steadiness.

“By my life,” he said. “And by my hands. I swear that no harm will come to her.”

“By your hands,” murmured Mildred. “A good oath for a swordsman.”

She pushed the bowl back into Ciri’s hands.

“I’m not hungry,” Ciri muttered. Mildred ignored her.

“You two can sleep here for the night,” she said to Juniper. “Rest. It’ll be a long, hard journey in this snow.”

She gathered the furs off Ciri’s chair and set about laying them out on the floor. Ciri discretely placed her stew bowl on the floor by the hearth, then turned to face Juniper. He shifted from foot to foot, clearly at a loss for words.

“Fiona,” she said, stepping forward and holding out her hand. “Since we’re going to be traveling together.”

He paused, then grasped her hand in his. His ring finger was missing, she noticed, no doubt a meal for some monster.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Fiona.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the fic's namesake arrives!
> 
> I weirdly loved writing Mildred and Roger, kinda sad to say goodbye to them next chapter.
> 
> Also, do y'all like these short and sweet chapters? I considered making them longer but keeping them short means more frequent updates and I kinda like the serialized format. But if you find them annoying, lmk


	4. Chapter 4

Ciri and Juniper left early the next morning, laden down with dried meat that Mildred and Roger had insisted on tucking into their packs.

“The town has a ghoul problem,” Juniper told her as they waded through the snow towards Roger’s small stable. “Or had, rather. I killed them all last night. We just need to bring the heads to the mayor to collect our coin.”

“And then what?”

“And then it’s on to the next town.”

He swung the stable door open. One of the three horses inside perked her ears up, huffing a greeting as Juniper approached. She was a small dun mare with a white blotch on her nose, and she stamped her feet like she was eager to run.

“What’s her name?” Ciri asked as Juniper gathered her tack. You could tell a lot about a man by the names he gave to things.

“Chamomile.”

“A medicinal herb.”

He swung the saddle over her back.

“Yes.”

“Like Juniper.”

“Yes.”

“Trying to say something?”

Surprise flickered across his face. Not expecting a perceptive child. Or a curious one. To be fair to him, she had been rather reticent to that point but—she didn’t want to be fair to him. The underestimation was just another way in which he _wasn’t Geralt._

“People don’t exactly welcome witchers into their towns with open arms,” he said, coaxing the bit into Chamomile’s mouth. “And naming your horse after something healing doesn’t fix that, exactly, but it’s better than galloping into a village on a black stallion named Bloodsucker.”

“Oddly specific.”

“Not all witchers see things the way I do. I’ve run into quite a few that think that intimidation is their strongest weapon. To sometimes absurd levels.”

He tightened the last strap around Chamomile’s belly and retrieved a lumpy, bloodstained sack from the corner. The ghouls’ heads.

“Alright if I pick you up?”

She nodded and he hefted her over Chamomile’s back, pulling himself up after her. And then they were off, cantering through the snowbanks, sending up white clouds in every direction. The world shone bright and clean and fresh around them, and it made Ciri’s heart ache in a way that she couldn’t explain.

Juniper pulled back on the reins just outside the edge of the town, slowing Chamomile to a walk.

“What’s wrong?” Ciri asked.

“People. I can hear a crowd.”

She couldn’t hear anything. But then, she didn’t have the ears of a witcher. Geralt had reminded her of that, over and over, reminded her that there were things in the woods that she couldn’t hear. He had shushed her, sometimes, in the middle of a conversation. Stretched out a hand and tilted his head and _listened,_ every muscle a bowstring.

And then, sometimes, he would go crashing into the undergrowth and come back with the head of some monster. And other times, he would whisper _people_ in that same, tense way that Juniper just had, and they would wait. They’d stay still and silent for hours and wait for the danger to pass.

She had thought that he avoided those confrontations because he was scared of what he could do to a wayward group of thieves. But now—now she thought he’d been scared of what a wayward band of thieves could do to him. Or to her.

She’d never asked.

She should have.

 _Gods,_ she should have asked him so much.

“Angry?” she asked Juniper because if there was a mob waiting for them, they should probably give up on their coin.

“No,” said Juniper. “No, they sound—they sound panicked.”

He kicked Chamomile into a trot.

There was indeed a panicked crowd waiting for them in the town square—the entire population of this village, going by the number of houses.

“Witcher!” shouted a portly young man, shoving his way through the crowd.

“Mayor,” Juniper said with a frown, drawing Chamomile to a halt.

“There’s a—there’s something—it’s some kind of giant it’s—”

He flapped his hands frantically at his sides, gesturing at what looked like a grain storage. A thick chain had been wrapped through the door handles, bolting it shut.

“It’s holed up in there it—it took three men, five _children,_ we don’t—”

Juniper swung himself off of his horse and snatched a fistful of potions from the saddlebag. Ciri hopped down after him.

“Stay back,” he told her, just like Geralt always did. “That goes for all of you,” he called to the village.

She nodded and slipped into the crowd as they backed up the street, watching with trepidation as Juniper hefted his sword and approached the building. A roar echoed through the town, the furious scream of whatever monster lay inside. Juniper paused, one hand on the door. He took a deep breath. Steadying himself? Was he _nervous?_

Then he unwound the chain and kicked the door open.

It was—she didn’t know what it was, actually. Geralt had taught her about all manners of monsters, but he’d never described something like _this._ It was ten feet tall, at least, human-shaped, gray-skinned and bald. It wore no armor, but Ciri didn’t think it needed it. It did, however, carry a massive metal club, all stuck through with sharp points. It stared down Juniper and it roared, furious and wild. And Juniper—hesitated. Just for a moment. Like he was as frozen as the icy homes around them.

And then the giant arced its arm high above his head and brought the club swinging down towards Juniper. For one short, terrifying second, Ciri thought she was going to watch him die. But at the last moment, he dove out of the way, and the giant’s club crashed into the frozen earth with a rumbling thud.

Whatever spell that had held Juniper had broken, and he fought with the same intensity that Ciri had witnessed the few times she had seen Geralt do battle. His sword was a blur of silver at his side as he ducked and wove around the giant’s lumbering blows, graceful and quick, like the fight was a dance he’d been practicing for years. His other hand fluttered in front of him, spilling purple magic over the ground and slowing the giant’s steps. Yrden.

He popped the cap off a potion and downed it, and his already-fast steps became the flight of some stinging insect. He darted in and out of the giant’s range, slashing new cuts into its thick hide as it roared in pain and tried, ineffectually, to grab him. A wasp against an enraged boar.

And then he stepped in close and thrust the sword forward, directly into the giant’s mouth. Shattered teeth rained down around him as the giant gave one last, mighty roar, and toppled over backwards.

Juniper pulled his sword from his mouth and turned to face the shocked crowd, shoulders heaving, eyes black as pitch, ink spilling into his veins. Several of the townspeople shrank back, corralling their children closer to themselves. They had just watched this man save him, and yet—

And yet.

The mayor broke the spell, sprinting past Juniper and into the building.

He let out a cry that was part grief and part relief, and when he staggered out, he was clutching a crying girl to his chest. Behind him, the giant’s other hostages filed out, dazed and blinking in the snow-mirrored sunlight. Bruised and battered, but alive. Whole.

They ran to join their families, their friends, their community. Not one of them stopped to thank Juniper.

Ciri slipped from the crowd and made her way to Juniper’s side. He was watching the crowd silently, still clinging to his sword. There was something broken in the tightness of his jaw, in the slump of his shoulders. Something that Ciri had never seen in Geralt.

“Come on,” he said before she could question it. “Let’s go get our coin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's real witcher sad boi hours folks


	5. Chapter 5

She was lashed to a tree, a gag in her mouth to stop her from screaming. Back in the clearing. She always seemed to wake up back in the clearing. The Nilfgaardians had captured her, had finally achieved their goal, but they were barely paying her any mind.

They were too busy building a fire. Piling wood around a limp figure.

Piling wood around Geralt.

He was barely conscious, only remaining upright due to the rope that had been lashed around his wrists, binding him to a metal stake in the middle of the clearing. Ciri screamed a protest around the gag, her chaos scratching at the inside of her throat like a trapped dog. But the Nilfgaardians just laughed at her and continued building Geralt’s pyre.

This was a dream. She _knew_ this was a dream. _Wake up. Just wake up._ She didn’t want to watch this. She didn’t need to.

One of the Nilfgaardians hefted a torch high in the air. Geralt lifted his head, dull eyes fixed on the tongue of flame. He tugged weakly at the ropes, but she knew that he wouldn’t break them. Her dreams wouldn’t allow Geralt a happy ending. His head flopped over and he sagged against the stake as the torch-bearer drew closer.

Ciri squeezed her eyes shut. _Wake up._ When she opened them, Geralt was staring at her. The flames seemed to dance in his yellow eyes.

“Help me,” he gasped. “Ciri, _help me.”_

The bonfire caught alight, flames growing unnaturally fast. Smoke wreathed around Geralt’s thin and dirty face, fire licked at his skin. He threw back his head and howled.

She woke up.

Just a dream, she told herself. It was just a dream. Geralt had died quickly, felled by some soldier’s sword. He hadn’t suffered. Not like that. Not like—

She pressed a hand against her mouth, trying to muffle the sob that forced its way out of her lungs. Because what if he _hadn’t_ died quickly? What if the Nilfgaardians were angry that he’d let her escape, and what if they’d burned him to death, or cut off his hands, or blinded him, or given him any of the horrible deaths that her mind kept haunting her with?

And what did it say of her, that she was hoping that he’d died _quickly_ and _cleanly?_

There was a shifting across the room, a sleepy sigh. Juniper. Shit. She bit down on her hand. He couldn’t see her like this, couldn’t see her so weak.

“Fiona?” he mumbled.

She gasped out a breath, sharp and shuddery. Juniper’s bed creaked as he climbed out, and he crossed the room on nearly-silent feet, leaning over her with a concerned frown.

“Fiona? Hey—”

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Go back to sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

“I _said_ I’m fine.”

She rolled over and buried her face in her arms, refusing to look at Juniper. She didn’t want to see his eyes, not right now, not when she had just seen the exact same eyes staring at her in naked terror and gods, why did all witchers have the _same_ _fucking eyes?_

“Okay,” Juniper said. His voice was light and calm and she hated it. Hated him. “Okay.”

The silence hung over them like a blanket of smoke, suffocating and stifling. Her breath kept hitching in her throat, ringing through the silence as loudly as if she had shouted and she couldn’t _control_ it—

“I can tell you a story,” murmured Juniper. “If you want. Take your mind off of it.”

And it was the same thing Geralt had offered after she woke him up for the fifth time with a nightmare about Cintra, and Juniper was just sliding into the space he had left in her life, like he had any right to be there. Rage burned in her, quick and hot as the fire that had consumed everything she’d ever loved.

“I just watched my father die,” she snapped. “The father that you’re replacing. I watched him die for the hundredth time.”

“I—”

“So tell me, do you have a story that can bring him back?”

He made a soft, choked sound in the back of his throat, but said nothing.

“No? Then you can’t help me. Let me sleep.”

Juniper didn’t say anything else. He went back to his bed, settled back under the covers. But his breath didn’t even out back into sleep. He was staying up. Keeping watch for danger. Keeping watch for her weakness. She lay there until the sky started to lighten, the smell of smoke still dancing in her nostrils, and silently hated him.

***

They were both exhausted the next day. Juniper’s eyes were ringed in dark circles and his already-messy hair was sticking up in a dozen different directions. She couldn’t imagine that she looked much better.

She could tell that Juniper wanted to talk about what she had said last night, turning to her with a half-open mouth three separate times on the way to the next town. Each time, she glared him into silence. In the light of day, without Geralt’s charred ghost hovering over her, she could admit that she didn’t _hate_ Juniper. But that didn’t mean that she wanted to talk to him.

She kept expecting him to snap, to demand that she speak, to demand that she listen. Because she was an unwanted and unwanting burden, and he wouldn’t tolerate her stony silence forever. She knew that she was pushing him towards pushing her away, knew that she would probably end up alone. Again. Knew that that would go against destiny, would trigger a whole new wave of problems. Knew that she should just keep playing docile, playing innocent, playing childish.

But she didn’t care.

She was a lion cub. A wolf cub. Not a kitten.

She waited. And waited. But he let the silence linger, let it gather between them like a building storm. They didn’t exchange a single word all day.

***

She gasped out of another nightmare that night. This time, they had tied a noose around Geralt’s throat and hoisted him over a tree branch. Not fast enough to snap his neck. They had laughed while he twitched and jerked, slowly suffocating. She woke with his blue-tinged lips murmuring her name in her ear, and her throat burned like she was wearing a noose too.

Juniper crawled out of bed and slipped across the room and she braced herself for another round of questions.

“Your hair’s all messy,” he said instead. “Can I braid it?”

And it was—

She knew it was comfort. She knew that that’s what he was trying to do, that he had seen how she shied away from words, that he had decided to try action instead. And she didn’t want to let him comfort her, didn’t want to give in to the aching loneliness that was eating up her heart.

But she couldn’t last another night without sleep.

And though Geralt had told her stories, so many stories, he had never braided her hair.

“Okay,” she whispered, sitting up and turning her head away from Juniper.

The bed shifted under his weight as he sat down on the edge. His fingers stroked through her hair, careful, gentle, like he was holding something precious. Detangling the snarls that had been knotted into it for weeks.

She waited for him to ask her about her nightmares. Waited for him to break the tenuous silence.

But he just separated her hair into three parts and started to braid.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a longer chapter today.
> 
> This is also the point in the story where shit starts to hit the fan, and doesn't stop hitting the fan until the end. So buckle up, buttercup.

There was something wrong with Juniper.

Ciri discovered that piecemeal, as the winter wore on and on and on, as they traveled from town to forest to castle. She had caught a glimpse of it on their first-ever hunt—in the way he froze before the ice giant, in the way he looked at the celebrating townsfolk like he ached to join them. But she had been too caught up in her own grief to dig any deeper.

And now—well she was still caught up in her own grief. The loss of Geralt still stung sharp in her chest, like a knife in her heart. But you could only travel with someone for so long before you started to pick up on their tragedies. 

He was quiet, sometimes. Not in the way that Geralt had been, soft-spoken and comfortable in silence, considering every word before he said it, weighing if it needed to said at all. But like she was when the sum of her life got too difficult to parse. That same suffocated wordlessness. It happened mostly after monster hunts when the excitement died down, and they had collected their coin. He would stare down at his bloody hands like they didn’t belong to him, and his fingers would shake, and she thought she saw something dying in his eyes.

She didn’t know what to say to him in those moments, and she didn’t know what to do. So she said nothing at all, just handed him a basin to wash away the blood. Waited until he blinked back the pain, until he was himself again. They never lasted very long, those quiet spells. Until one night, when they had been traveling together for about two months.

A werewolf had been feeding on a tiny village for nearly a year, picking off the sick and the young and the old. When they arrived, the villagers were desperate, pooling together what little they had to pay Juniper. He took the contract, of course. He probably would’ve taken it if they’d offered him half the money. He was like Geralt, in that way. Stupidly noble.

She wanted to find whoever started the rumor that witchers were heartless and kick their teeth in.

Juniper left her behind in the tavern below the inn they were staying at, settled at a table by the fireplace with a platter of bread and meat. A bard sat in the corner, tuning his lute and preparing for his nightly performance.

“Okay, you have food, water, entertainment. Need anything else?” Juniper asked her. She shook her head.

“Great. I’ll be back before dawn,” Juniper said, before slipping out into the moonlight.

And he came back, hours later, spattered in blood, eyes bleeding black lines under his skin. He stepped through the doors, swaying slightly on his feet, and hoisted the werewolf’s head in the air. The tavern erupted into cheers. People rushed forward, crying, laughing, swarming around Juniper and ripping the head from his hands. They nudged him, jostled him, clapped hands on his shoulders and back, fleeting moments of contact. Like he was a burning thing. They wanted to thank Juniper, but they were scared to touch him for too long. And then they were backing away, tying the head to a pole and raising it into the air. The bard grinned and climbed on top of his stool.

“Give it up for the witcher!” he shouted, strumming a familiar chord.

Ciri’s stomach dropped.

_“When a humble bard—”_

This wasn’t Juniper’s song.

_“Graced a ride along—”_

And she couldn’t _sit_ here and listen to it.

_“With Geralt of Rivia—”_

Couldn’t listen to some third-rate bard sing the praises of a dead man in a voice that she knew wouldn’t do the tale justice.

_“Along came this song.”_

She climbed down from her table and made her way over to Juniper, intending to tell him that she was tired, intending to ask him to retire for the night. But the words died at her lips as soon as she reached him. Because he didn’t look okay. He was standing stock-still, staring at the celebrating crowd, shoulders heaving. And she could hear his breath over the off-key singing. It was wheezing, and sharp, and far, _far_ too fast.

“Do you need a healer?” she asked him. He turned pitch-black eyes in her direction and shook his head.

“Okay. Let’s go upstairs, then.”

He nodded but he didn’t move, frozen in place just like he had been before the ice giant. And he was staring at her, but she didn’t think he was seeing her, not really. She leaned forward and took his hand. His fingers were limp. Cold. She tugged him through the crowd and he shuffled along willingly, but it felt like he was going through the motions of existing.

She pulled him away from the crowd that was celebrating him—but not him, not really, there were no ballads written about the witcher named after something healing—and not a single person stopped her. She didn’t think they even noticed the departure of their savior.

They made it to their room and she pushed Juniper down in a chair.

“What do you need?” she asked him. He just looked at her, still gasping, still shaking.

“What do you _need?”_ she tried again. He ducked his head, staring down at his hands.

Okay. She grabbed the washbasin off the bedside table and set it on the floor beside Juniper. Dipped a clean cloth into the water and drew it over his trembling fingers. He jerked at the touch but didn’t protest. So she kept going, cleaning away the blood and the dirt.

“What happened?” she asked him. He shook his head, blinking rapidly.

“Okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

She dipped the cloth back in the washbasin and watched scarlet bloom over the surface of the water.

“Sorry,” he whispered as she brought the cloth up to his face.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t. You’ve calmed me down enough times.”

So many sleepless nights, him braiding and unbraiding and re-braiding her hair.

_It’s not right,_ he would say, when he’d finished and she still shook in fear. _Let me do it again._

“Different,” he muttered.

“How?”

“I’m supposed to protect you.”

_I don’t need protection._

Not what he needed to hear right now.

“We’re supposed to protect each other,” she said instead. He closed his eyes and she drew the cloth over his eyelids. He sighed, deep and shuddering.

“I thought witchers didn’t get scared,” she lied, trying to goad him into speech. She had seen Geralt scared, a few times, when a monster got too close to her. She had seen him terrified, that last night in the clearing and in every dream since.

“Wasn’t always a witcher.”

“But you were made one young, weren’t you? So young that you can barely remember being human, right?”

That was what Geralt had told her when she had asked him about his transformation. But she probably shouldn’t know that fact.

“I mean, that’s what they always say about witchers.”

Juniper huffed out a half-laugh. Some of the tension bled out of him, as Ciri kept swiping the cloth over his face. His eyes were starting to fade from black to yellow, the dark webbing vanishing from his skin. Geralt had told her that everything felt _more_ when he took his potions, the world sharp and clear as glass around him. She wondered if that had contributed to Juniper’s franticness.

“True enough,” he said. He sounded very tired. But he was aware of the world, at least. Aware of her. Able to respond to her questions. That had to be a good sign, right? “I was—I don’t know, five? Six? Somewhere around there. I was turned into a witcher, and—and for a long time, monster hunting was all I knew.”

He hesitated, staring at the bowl of bloody water like it had an answer for him. Weighing his words. For a moment, she didn’t think he was going to continue.

“But then I was cursed,” he said at last.

“Cursed?”

That was new. She had heard a few stories about curses, princesses locked in eternal slumber, a bard whose voice had been stolen by a djinn. Her own father had been cursed to wear the face of a hedgehog. But she had never actually _met_ a cursed person before.

“How?” she asked.

“Mages call it the twenty-year undoing,” he said. “You might have heard of it, it’s the subject of a few tragic plays. A rare curse, but a nasty one.”

She shook her head.

“Okay well,” he sighed. “Think of the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”

Cintra burning.

Mousesack turning to her with a stretched-out smile.

Geralt disappearing under a wave of steel.

“Okay,” she said. Her voice sounded very small.

“Now imagine one day, you wake up and it never happened. All memory of it gone, all traces of it wiped away. Your life whole again.”

“It sounds like a blessing.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“But—?”

“But the curse takes a while to pay off. The pain doesn’t come in the casting but in the breaking. It’s called the twenty-year undoing because that’s exactly what it does. For twenty years, you are who you would have been if the worst thing in your life had never happened. And then the curse breaks and you’re yourself again.”

The room was quiet, save for the low hum of celebrating townsfolk below them. Ciri’s breath was stuck in her throat, claggy and cold against her vocal cords. Juniper just kept staring at the water, head bowed like a mountain was resting on his back.

“For some people,” he said. “It means regaining sight, only to be plunged back into a darkness that they’ve forgotten how to navigate. For some, it means getting twenty extra years with a lover long since dead, not even knowing that they’re living on borrowed time. And for me—”

He gestured to his eyes.

“The worst thing that ever happened to me was being turned into a witcher. So for twenty years, I was human again. And then, about two years ago, the curse broke.”

“I’m sorry,” Ciri whispered. “I—That sounds awful.”

“It was,” Juniper said. “It still is. There are moments where I forget who I am, what I am. Moments where a monster roars and I feel like I can’t fight it. Moments where I expect kindness and am greeted with fear instead.”

He looked up, finally. Smiled at her, pained and small.

“But it’s getting easier,” he said. “Day by day, it’s getting easier. All hurts fade, given enough time.”

She wanted to ask how much time it would take to forget turning her back on the man that had protected her for a year. How much time it would take to forget the sound of her grandmother’s body as it hit the ground.

“Who were you?” she asked him instead. “When you were human?”

“I chased after adventure,” he said. “I think some part of me remembered what I really was. Wanted it back, odd as it might seem.”

“What kind of adventure?”

“All kinds.”

“And what did you do, when you found it?”

He sighed and turned away. She could almost swear she saw tears in his eyes and it made sense, that this man had been human for a long, long time.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it.”

She gathered up the bowl and the cloth and turned away to put them back on the table, shame boiling in her stomach. She could never be content in her knowledge of people, could she? She just kept digging, deeper and deeper until she hit something painful.

And then, from behind her, she heard a soft voice. A lilting melody, sad but hopeful. Almost a lullaby. The story of a princess born into the shape of a monster and a witcher who had kept her from her tomb until dawn. Juniper was singing _._ His voice was cracking and tired, but it was still far better than that of the bard downstairs.

She sank onto the floor at his feet, heart aching and unfurling all at once, and listened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, your comments on the last chapter made me so freaking happy you have no idea. I was just reading through them this morning and smiling like an idiot (and cackling manically, but that is neither here nor there).

Juniper didn’t volunteer more information about his time as a human, and Ciri didn’t ask. It felt too much like poking at an open wound. But she did pick up little hints. She was almost certain that he’d been a musician. His singing was far too good to be untrained, and whenever they came across a bard or a street musician in their travels, he watched them with a sort of desperate hunger. He was difficult to look at in those moments. Most of the time, she could forget what she had learned about the curse. But she was forced to confront Juniper’s humanity every time they listened to music. He always got so far away, and looked equally ready to join in the song or burst into tears. A slap-in-the-face reminder of the person he used to be.

He loved people. When he and Ciri went to taverns, he always lingered at the edge of the crowd, listening to their stories and gossip and cheer. He always tried to make small talk with merchants and innkeepers, despite the constant pushback. He was sympathetic when he took contracts, soothing and kind, nothing like Geralt’s brusqueness.

 _I don’t need your sympathy,_ one woman had snarled, when he’d tried to prop up some of her grief over her werewolf-mauled son. _I just need you to kill that thing._

Juniper had nodded, had mumbled an apology, but Ciri could see something snap in half in his eyes.

He loved people. And they didn’t love him back. And maybe he’d been used to that, as a witcher, but the curse—

She wanted to hunt down the mage who’d cursed him. Find the person that had given him a taste of music and love, only to snatch it away. Geralt had been satisfied with his lot as a witcher. Maybe not happy, but he hadn’t known the full extent of what had been taken from him, all those years ago. Hadn't known what being human entailed, at least, not well enough to miss it.

And Juniper did. And it broke him.

She knew that now, with the full context. Knew that he was broken. And he knew that she knew. She expected that to shift something between them. Expected him to be more guarded around her. More distant. Colder. Less willing to comfort.

It did shift something, but not in the way that Ciri expected. Juniper walked a bit lighter. Still with that same witcher rigidity, but there was a spring in his step that wasn’t there before. Like a small part of the mountain had been lifted off his shoulders. He smiled more. He laughed more. He even sang to her sometimes while he braided her hair.

Telling her about his stolen humanity had settled something in his chest.

It almost made Ciri want to tell him the truth about her. Tell him who she was, tell him that her “dead father” was actually another witcher, that Nilfgaard had killed him, that it was all her fault. The secrets burned in her chest, dragged down her limbs. Geralt’s medallion hung around her neck like a many-ton weight. And some days, she was so, so close to pulling it off and pressing it into Juniper’s hands. _I haven’t told you everything about myself, either._

But what if Juniper learned that she’d already killed one of his kind and decided that she wasn’t worth the risk? What if he left her at the next inn, passed her off to some childless farmer? Or worse, what if he handed her over to Nilfgaard himself? She was sure there was a price on her head.

She knew that she was being ridiculous. Juniper felt _safe,_ in a way that very few people ever had. But Mousesack had felt safe too, and look how that had turned out. She couldn’t trust her instincts, because what if they were wrong? What if Juniper was just like everyone else who’d betrayed her? She didn’t think she could take it.

So she stayed silent, as the weeks stretched on and winter melted away, as Juniper got lighter and lighter and she got heavier and heavier. And maybe the secret would have festered beneath her tongue forever. Or maybe it would have fought its way out. She’d never know because she didn’t get to make the choice. Nilfgaard forced her hand.

They were getting ready to leave a formerly-ghoul-infested town, coins jangling against Juniper’s hip. He was smiling, free and easy, as he gathered up their belongings.

“There’s another town five miles north of here,” he said. “Same problem. Should pay about the same. If we keep this up, we might be able to hole up in some cottage all next winter. Nice and warm.”

“And not hunting wraiths in the snow,” Ciri finished, shoving the last tunic into her bag.

“Precisely. Got everything?”

She nodded.

“Let’s go.”

The stairwell was dark and narrow, and they were halfway down the stairs when Juniper went rigid. He put a hand on Ciri’s shoulder.

“Get behind me,” he said, in a voice that left no room for argument.

She got behind him. Her throat was tight and gods, gods, no, _not_ _again._

Juniper unsheathed his sword. There was a low laugh from the bottom of the stairs.

“Their footsteps stopped. Told you that the mutant would hear us.”

A Nilfgaardian knight stepped into the stairwell, armor jangling. He hefted a crossbow on his shoulder, pointing it almost casually at Juniper’s forehead.

“Hello, princess,” he said to Ciri. “Nice to see you again. You gave us quite the run-around.”

“Don’t talk to her,” snarled Juniper. He didn’t move a muscle. “Turn around and walk away.”

The knight laughed. It sounded very hollow, a shallow imitation of warmth.

“It’s funny that you think you have any power,” he said. “There are two dozen men waiting for you in the main room, if your skull is thick enough to survive my bolt.”

“Turn around. And walk. Away.”

“It’s very simple, witcher. Give us the girl and you get to live.”

He curled his finger over the trigger. Chaos coiled in Ciri’s throat.

“One witcher has already stood between us and her. Trust me when I say you don’t want to end up like him.”

Juniper’s sword arm shook.

“What?” he asked, shock threading through his voice.

“You know what?” The soldier lowered the crossbow, shifting his aim from Juniper’s forehead to his stomach. “Maybe I won’t kill you. The other witcher—his screams are so very beautiful. I think you two would make for a lovely duet.”

The world fell away.

No.

He couldn’t be—he couldn't— _no._

Geralt was _alive?_

She had left him, and he was alive, and Nilfgaard had had him for _four fucking months._

_His screams are so very beautiful._

Juniper was right in front of her but all she saw was the soldier, cackling with hollow laughter. Her ears were ringing and the world was red and _they were torturing him, they were hurting him, they were—_

The chaos was tearing her vocal cords apart, dancing wildly in her chest, sparking at her fingertips. She couldn't let it out. She couldn't. It would kill Juniper.

"How about it, princess?" the guard asked. "You can choose which one gets to die first. I'd suggest picking the one you love most."

It gathered in her like a rising tide, and she could no more hold it back than she could hold back the sea.

She opened her mouth and her chaos exploded.


	8. Chapter 8

For once, the clearing was empty of Nilfgaardians.

It was quiet. A peaceful night in late fall, the silence broken only by the low hoots of owls and the mournful cooing of nightingales. The moonlight cast dim shadows across the leafy ground, painting everything in a faint silver glow.

There was a man slumped over in the middle of the clearing, curled up on the ground like he was protecting his midsection. Skinny. Weak. He was breathing, but it was slow and unsteady, like he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. His skin glistened under the moonlight, painted with something dark and wet. His hair snarled around his face, obscuring it from view, but she didn’t need a face to know who it was.

 _Geralt,_ she choked, falling to his side and resting a hand on his bony shoulder. _I’m here. I’m here._

He didn’t answer, just shifted his head so that he could look at her. His eyes were glassy. Empty. Like Geralt had flown out of his body, leaving nothing but a shell behind. The smell of iron filled her nose, and she realized that the dark, wet substance covering his skin was blood. More blood than a person could lose and still live.

 _I’m here,_ she said. _I saved you._

 _No, you didn’t,_ he whispered, and his voice was a raspy imitation of itself. _You just gave me a slower death._

 _I’m sorry,_ she sobbed. She brushed a hand over his face, trying to wipe away some of the blood and grime. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know._

 _You should’ve screamed,_ he said. His eyes slipped shut. _Killed me quick. Juniper was lucky._

Juniper.

_Juniper._

Oh gods, what had she done? Her throat was on fire, and it wasn’t from tears. It felt raw, like she’d been shouting for hours. She had to wake up. She had to—

Crashing footsteps. Whinnying horses. The Nilfgaardians, arriving in her nightmare after all.

 _Please,_ Geralt said. _End it. Don’t let them take me again._

And he was her family, and she didn’t want to hurt him.

A knight strode out of the trees, clutching a whip in his hand. It was already shining with blood. Geralt flinched beneath her hands.

 _I’m sorry,_ she said, one last time. And then she screamed.

She jolted awake, staring up at the ceiling of the stairwell. She’d fallen where she stood but, miraculously, hadn’t toppled down the stairs. Something was crushing her legs, pinning them down and pressing sharp lines of pain into the backs of her knees. She levied herself up on her arms.

At the bottom of the stairwell, the Nilfgaardian soldier had collapsed into a boneless heap. His crossbow bolt had embedded itself in the wall next to him.

And Juniper’s body was sprawled across her legs.

“No,” she said, a protest against—who? The world? Herself? No one else was alive to hear it.

“No,” she said again. Like the word would undo what she had just done. She pressed a hand against her burning throat.

 _“No.”_ It sounded more like a sob than a real word.

She wiggled out from underneath the body and took a shaky step back up the stairs, clutching on to the railing with a white-knuckled hand. Now what? Now what? Geralt was alive, and Juniper was dead, and she _didn’t know what to do._

She had nowhere to go and no one to help her, and Geralt was being _tortured,_ oh gods. The soldier’s words echoed in her ears, ringing and ringing until they were all she could hear. _His screams are so very beautiful, his screams are so very beautiful, his screams—_ The chaos squirmed furiously on her tongue and she beat it back with a growl. Hadn’t it done enough? Claimed enough lives for one day?

She took a deep breath. Okay. Okay. She would go to Nilfgaard. She would get Geralt out or kill them both trying, even if she had to do it completely alone. Just keep moving. Take Chamomile and get out of town. She could be in Nilfgaard in two weeks if she rode hard, and if their soldiers captured her, well, they would take her to wherever Geralt was, and then she could—

A low groan.

She froze.

Juniper stirred. He flung out an arm, grabbed the railing, and hoisted himself to his feet. He swayed to the side but managed to keep his balance.

“Fiona? Fiona, what was—”

“How?” she choked. “My chaos, it—it kills _everything,_ how are you still alive?”

“I—I don’t know. Witchers have a higher tolerance for magic, so maybe—”

“Oh gods.”

Witchers had a higher tolerance for magic. Witchers could survive her screams. Geralt could have—

She could have—

“I could have saved him.”

She sank to the ground. There wasn’t enough air in the stairwell. There wasn’t enough air in the world. Was she dying? It felt like she was dying.

“Breathe,” Juniper said, kneeling down in front of her. Some of the panic in her chest was in his voice too. Had she infected him?

“I can’t—I can’t—I can’t, I can’t, I—”

He lurched forward, grabbed her arm. She jerked back but he held on. Guided her hand to his chest.

“Feel how slow my breath is?”

He inhaled, exaggerating its slowness and loudness, drawing in the air between his teeth.

“Try to match it.”

“I can’t.”

“Just try.”

“But I could have—”

“Don’t talk. Talking takes air. Just breathe.”

She focused on the rise and fall of his chest. Focused on the heartbeat below her fingers, steady and witcher-slow. Alive. He was alive. She hadn’t killed him. She had saved his life, most likely. Just focus on that. Don’t think about—

Broken golden eyes.

Bloody skin.

He was so, so _skinny._

_His screams are—_

Juniper breathed. She followed.

She couldn’t say how long they sat there, huddled together in the cramped stairwell, ten feet away from a corpse. Juniper drew idle patterns over the back of her hand, circles and stars and figure eights, anchoring her to the Earth when all she wanted to do was fly away. Her breathing slowed. Slowed. Steadied out, long and even.

But they couldn’t sit here silently forever. The urgency was building in her legs. She had to move. They had to move. She didn’t know how long Geralt had left, didn’t know what Nilfgaard was doing to him.

“I could have—I let them take him, I could have _saved_ him. I—”

Her words came out in jolted stop-starts and Juniper looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time.

“You could have saved who?” he asked, and there was something like dread in his voice.

“I—”

She felt the panic rising up again, choking off her speech. She fumbled at her collar, drew out Geralt's medallion. Pressed it into Juniper’s hands. It wasn’t a name, but he could put the pieces together, he could understand that one of his kind was in danger, he could—

He stared down at the medallion like she had just handed him a bloody heart. Drew his thumb over the wolf’s head almost reverently. Swallowed once, twice. When he looked back up at her, his eyes were wide. _Terrified._

“Cirilla?”

What?

How did he—?

How could he possibly know that?

“Is that you?”

This man had stared down death for her and told it to walk the other way.

“Yes.”

He closed his eyes.

“I should have told you,” he said. “It was—remembering was too painful. I didn’t want to reminisce about being human, I changed my name for a reason, but I should have told you who I was.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He shook his head. Inhaled again, long and steady.

“My name is Juniper now, but it wasn’t always. When I was human, I went by something else.”

He clutched Geralt’s medallion like someone was trying to rip it from him.

“My name was Jaskier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow~ 
> 
> What a twist~~
> 
> No one saw that one coming~~~


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't update yesterday, I was out of the house all day. Here's a long-ish chapter to make up for it!

Jaskier.

Juniper’s name had been _Jaskier._

The same Jaskier that Geralt had talked about sometimes, hesitant and sad.

The bard that had chased after adventure, had chased after a witcher, because some part of him had remembered that he _was_ one.

Oh she was so stupid.

“Geralt might not have told you about me,” Juniper—Jaskier?—no, too weird, Juniper—said. “But we traveled together for—”

“He talked about you,” she cut him off. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, shocked and hoarse, still ringing with chaos. “He talked about you all the time.”

“Did he?” A hysterical laugh clung to the edges of Juniper’s words.

“He asked after you whenever we heard a bard singing one of your songs,” she said. “I think he was trying to find you. But months went by and no one knew where you were and he got—”

His questions took on a sort of desperation. He was frantic and wide-eyed, looking for anyone that had the slightest hint of Jaskier’s location.

 _I dunno where he is,_ one bard had said, packing his lute away. _No one knows. It’s like he’s dropped off the face of the planet._

 _They say he’s fallen madly in love with a countess and sworn off music forever,_ said another, two weeks later. He shoved a pint of ale into Geralt’s hand with a wild grin. Geralt’s knuckles went white around the handle.

 _They say he’s retreated to a remote island to work on his songs,_ said a third, barely paying them a second glance. _That he’s working on a masterpiece._

 _Oh yes, I also heard that he was heading to an island,_ corrected the bard’s friend. _But I also heard that his ship was in a terrible wreck._

That’s when the rumors all started to take on a similar theme.

_They say he tried to listen to siren song and had his throat torn out._

_They say he succumbed to the plague._

_They say—_

_They say—_

_They say he’s dead._

With each of those stories, Geralt’s shoulders sank further and further.

 _Maybe he’s just taking a break,_ Ciri said, not able to bear the look on his face. _Fame is taxing._

 _Maybe,_ Geralt replied, but there wasn’t any hope in it.

“—sad. He got sad. And worried. Everyone thought you were dead.”

“Ah.” Juniper winced. “Yes. I might have started some of those rumors. I didn’t want anyone looking at me and seeing a famous bard. It was a bit less risky if everyone thought that said famous bard was dead.”

“It broke his heart.”

“I didn’t think he’d care.”

“But he cared—he _cares_ so much. Surely you knew that.” Geralt hid it well, but Ciri saw it every time she woke up from a nightmare, every time he gave her his cloak when she shivered, every time he slayed a monster for a village that could only pay him a handful of coins.

“I know. Of course I know. But I didn’t think—” He paused. Stared down at the medallion like it could explain everything to him. “I didn’t think he cared about me.”

“Why _not?”_

“We—we had a fight. He said some things that were—”

“He cares about you okay?” she cut him off. Because he looked upset, even a little bit angry, and she couldn’t risk him leaving Geralt to rot.

“I—”

“He cares about you so much, please, we—we have to save him, I’m sorry he hurt you, but we have to save him.”

“Hey.” He grabbed her shoulders. “Hey. Breathe. It’s okay.”

“We have to—they’re hurting—they said—”

“I know. I _know,_ sweetheart. We’ll save him, okay? I promise.”

He rubbed soothing circles into her back and she closed her eyes, leaning into the grounding touch.

“Of course we’ll save him,” Juniper murmured. “I’d help him even if he hated me.”

They stayed like that for a long moment, trapped in quiet grief. The soldier’s words hung over them like a ghost. Right now, in some small, dingy cell, Geralt was suffering. Screaming. And their knowledge alone couldn’t stop that. They’d need to ride to Nilfgaard, or Cintra, or wherever they had him. And every hour they stopped to rest was one more hour that Nilfgaard could use to torture Geralt.

“We should go,” Juniper said, pulling back from her and wiping a hand across his eyes. Had he been crying?

“We should,” said Ciri.

“I’m taking you to Kovir.”

“What?”

“It’s where I was trained,” Juniper said. “I have friends there—other witchers—they can watch you while I—”

“No.”

“You—”

“ _No._ I am not staying behind.”

Panic boiled in her throat. Juniper couldn't leave her with some witchers in Kovir while he rode off to take on all of Nilfgaard single-handed. They'd tear him apart, or they'd capture him and tear him apart slower. He would suffer, and Nilfgaard would still have Geralt. And she'd be alone. Again.

“Geralt wouldn’t want me to put you at risk.”

“I wouldn’t _be_ at risk, I have magic that can _kill.”_

“Magic that knocks you out.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry. But I can help him, okay? I promise.”

“I can learn to control it, I can—”

“We don’t have much time—”

“I can _learn.”_

“Cirilla—”

“If you try to leave me I’ll follow you.”

“You—"

“I’m not going to sit in some castle while my father is being tortured!”

Silence. She was trembling. _Father._ The word hadn’t been planned. It had slipped off her tongue in a burst of emotion. But it was true, wasn’t it? He was more of a father to her than Duny had ever been.

And she might not ever get the chance to tell him that.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please. Let me come with you.”

He sighed, deep and shuddering. Drew a hand over his face.

“Okay. Alright. I have an idea.”

He got to his feet. She scrambled after him.

“Really?”

“Really. But we have to get out of here first.”

He led her down the stairs and over the sprawled out body of the Nilfgaardian. His head was twisted around at a strange angle and blood pooled around his face, trickling down from his ears and nose. She gagged. He was evil, she reminded herself. Evil and cruel and took pleasure in causing pain.

And yet.

She swallowed around the burning lump of coal in her throat. Juniper put a hand on her shoulder.

“You saved my life,” he said. “There’s no shame in that.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“There will be more outside. In the main part of the tavern. If you want to close your eyes—”

“No,” she said, surprising herself with the viciousness in her voice. “I need to see this.”

He nodded, and together they stepped out of the stairwell. Twenty men dead on the ground. Blood spattered across every surface. Her chaos had done this. _She_ had done this, had cut short dozens of lives with a single scream. And maybe some of them were fresh-faced soldiers, conscripted into a cause they didn’t truly believe. They couldn’t all be sadistic monsters, could they? But that didn’t matter, not to the chaos that had poured from her throat and melted their brains.

Juniper kept one hand on her as they stepped between the bodies, guiding her gently out of the tavern. He started humming something under his breath, some lullaby she half-remembered from when she was very young. And it helped beat back the guilt building a nest in her chest, but she couldn’t stop staring at their faces, bloody and blue-lipped and frozen in terror.

“We should get out of town,” Juniper said as they left that place of death. “Fast. The Nilfgaardians must’ve told the villagers to get out of town, but they’ll come back soon. And we don’t want to be here when they do.”

She nodded. Of course. The villagers would come back, and they'd see an inn full of dead men and a witcher that was still breathing, and they would draw their own conclusions. And Ciri didn’t want to kill an entire village to save Juniper from a hangman’s noose.

They reached the stables and Juniper rushed to tack Chamomile.

“Before we leave,” he said as he tugged her saddle snug. “I have something I want to give you.”

He reached inside his largest bag, the one that carried the majority of their clothes and herbs, and pulled out a sturdy leather case.

“Be gentle with it,” he said, passing it over. “It’s survived a lot.”

She clicked the case open. A lute was nestled safely inside. It was beautiful and had obviously been well cared for. The wood was polished to glossy perfection, the strings were taut and unbroken. It was engraved with shining golden runes, sprawling across the body and wrapping up the neck. Elder speech.

“This was yours,” she breathed, running a careful hand over the wood. “When you were human.”

“Yes. I can’t play as well as I used to,” he said, holding up his four-fingered hand with a rueful smile. “But I could never bring myself to get rid of it. And now, I think I know why. I think it was just waiting for someone else to play it.”

There was a longing in his voice, that same longing that she saw every time they came across a musician, only more intense. And he was giving her his lute—his music—anyway.

“Why do you think that person is me?” she asked, voice trembling.

“Your magic comes from sound, doesn’t it?”

“From screaming.”

“From uncontrolled and powerful sound. Right now that’s the only way you can tap into your magic—by letting it be uncontrolled. Dangerous. But music…music takes all the confusion and wildness and variation in sound and makes it into something beautiful. Something _intentional._ And that’s its own kind of magic. Combined with _actual_ magic, well.”

He smiled. Guided her fingers to the strings. The chaos sparked in her arms, curious, a sleepy animal perking up its ears.

“Nilfgaard won’t know what hit it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that this probably isn't how Ciri's powers work in canon, but I want her to be a D&D bard so she's gonna be a D&D bard
> 
> Also, do y'all think I should tag this as Witcher!Jaskier? I want people looking for that trope to be able to find this fic, but I don't wanna spoil the twist...how important was the twist in your enjoyment of the fic/would you have liked it more or less if you'd known that Jaskier was a witcher going in?


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments and suggestions last chapter. I think I'm going to do what a few commenters suggested, which is to wait until the story is done and then tag it as Witcher!Jaskier so that people looking for that trope can find this fic.

Juniper asked questions at almost every inn they stopped at. Ciri wasn’t at his side for these conversations—it made men uneasy to talk about war so candidly with a child present—but she still caught snatches of them from where she sat across the room, kicking her legs impatiently as she stabbed at her food.

For four inns it was nothing, nothing, nothing. No one knew anything about the war other than the fact that it was mostly contained to the other side of Sodden, and thank the gods for that. A few stories of Nilfgaardian scouts that had been beaten back by angry northerners. Nothing useful.

“We should just go to Nilfgaard,” Ciri snapped, pacing around her room in the fourth inn. She felt like a caged animal, energy sparking up her legs and spine until all she wanted to do was run.

“We need to give ourselves the best chance of making it out alive,” Juniper said, slumping down on the bed. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and he stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. Neither of them had slept much for the past five days, but it showed on Juniper, while Ciri just felt more manic. _Move, move, move._

“And then Geralt dies while we’re improving our chances, and then what was even the point?”

Juniper winced. She stopped, crossing her arms over her chest, panting like she’d just run fifty miles.

“Geralt might not even be in Nilfgaard,” Juniper murmured. “They could be holding prisoners in bases all over the Southern Kingdoms. We can’t know.”

He was right. She knew he was right. They’d had this argument every night, and it always left her feeling frustrated and guilty and helpless. She bit her lip, tears welling in the back of her throat. Juniper sighed and swung his legs out of bed.

“Want me to teach you a few new chords?”

Here was something she could do. Some way she could help. Her fingertips were already rubbed raw from hours of practice, but she nodded anyway and pulled the lute out of her bag. Despite the jolts of pain as she pressed her fingers against the strings, it felt like it belonged in her hands. Like she was born to hold it.

“Okay so fingers one, three, and four and you put them on these strings…one goes a fret higher, there you go…and strum.”

She strummed. The chord rang out through the room, soft and mournful. Her chaos woke up in her chest, interest piqued by the sound.

“Good. Press a bit harder on finger three, that note is a bit off.”

She pressed harder and strummed again. A light breeze whisked through the room, ruffling Juniper’s hair and dancing through the fire.

“Well done,” he smiled. “Any guesses on what that chord is?”

It felt familiar in both the fingers and the sound, but it was still distinct. A little bit sadder, a little bit darker. She thought back to what they had learned yesterday. D Major. G Major.

“G Minor?”

“Exactly!”

He grinned at her as he combed through his hair with his fingers, trying to restore at least a bit of order.

“We’ll make a composer of you yet. Okay, try out some different movements with your right hand.”

She began to pluck through the notes one by one, alternating the base of the chord with the other two notes. One three four three four three four three one three four three…

The wind whisked around her arms, ruffling her sleeves and tugging at her cloak. She closed her eyes. _Concentrate._

One three four three four three four three one three…

Juniper yelped in indignation and she smirked. Opened her eyes and let her fingers fall away from the lute. He glared at her through a curtain of hair. The wind had pushed it over his head and directly into his face. He separated it, groaning as he realized that his tangles were back with a vengeance.

“I know that you’re still working on controlling your powers…”

“Oh, no, that was on purpose.”

He sighed and gave up on his hair.

“Of course it was.”

She giggled as he returned to his bed, crawling under the covers with a huff.

“You’ll be the death of me, I swear.”

She shook her head and went back to picking at the lute. Alternating the new chord with familiar ones, trying to get the feeling of the finger positions locked into her muscle memory.

“Do you think that Geralt will let me play for him?” she asked, wincing as she hit a bad note. She moved her second finger down a fret and tried again.

“I’m sure he will,” Juniper said, and there was something like sadness in his voice. “He never had much of an appreciation for the arts but, well. You’re his daughter, aren’t you?”

She frowned.

“Well if he doesn’t,” she said. “I can always play for you, can’t I?”

_I want you in my life. Even when we get him back, I still want you in my life._

He laughed, and if it was a little wet sounding, Ciri wasn’t going to comment on it.

“Of course you can, sweetheart. Of course you can.”

***

At the fifth inn, they finally got somewhere. Juniper fell deep into conversation with a grizzled looking woman with an eyepatch and a giant cut gouged into her face. She started out guarded, but after a few minutes, she seemed to relax, calling for ale for herself and Juniper and leaning forward to listen to his questions.

Ciri leaned forward herself, trying to eavesdrop without looking like she was eavesdropping.

“You were at Sodden Hill?” Juniper asked.

“Yeah.”

“And Nilfgaard, did they take any prisoners?”

“What, you wanna play a knight in shining armor to some poor northerners?” she laughed bitterly.

“Maybe I do.”

“Hmph.” She took a swig of her ale.

“Yeah, last I heard they were interrogating some folks that they snatched off the battlefield. See if they can get any info about the North’s battle plans.” She shook her head. “Poor souls. Nilfgaard’s mage…they call her Fringilla. I hear she’s an expert at pain.”

Ciri’s hand clenched around her fork, and she glared down at her venison like it was a Nilfgaardian’s head. Fringilla. Good. Now she had a name.

“You hear where they took them?” Juniper asked, somehow managing to keep his tone light and airy.

“Cintra, so I hear.”

Her heart leapt into her throat. Cintra. The prisoners were in _Cintra._ They had taken Geralt to her home. They were torturing him in her cellar, they were—She swallowed it all down. Stay like Juniper. Calm. Collected. Wait until they were somewhere safe, and then she could fall apart.

“Cintra. Hmm. Thank you.”

“No problem, witcher. If you _can_ save some of our people well, I’m glad to do my part.”

“One last question, then.”

“Always one last question.”

“There was another mage at the Battle of Sodden Hill.”

“There were many mages,” the woman said, a hint of dark amusement in her voice. “I’ve never seen so much magic in my life.”

“This one shot fire out of her hands.”

“Ah, yes. The fire mage of Sodden. Our savior.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“Last I heard, she was heading for Cidaris. Something about coastal air.”

“Doesn’t sound like her.”

“She was injured, in the fight. Or drained or…something. I don’t know. Don’t really get how magic works, and I didn’t see her after the fire. Just heard where she was going from a friend of a friend.”

“Thank you,” Juniper said. He put his mostly-full pint back down on the counter. _“Thank you.”_

“Sure you don’t want to stay and drink, witcher? Tell us some stories of a successful hunt?”

Something flickered in Juniper’s eyes. Longing. A piece of his humanity was being offered up on a silver platter—a tavern, an audience, a request for a story.

“No, sorry,” he said, striding back over towards Ciri. “I have places to be.”

“Suit yourself,” said the woman. “I’ll keep my ears peeled for news from Cintra. If I hear of soldiers going free, I’ll make sure to pour a drink out for you…what was your name again?”

“Juniper. Of Temeria.”

“Juniper,” she smiled. “Go easy, lad. Gods watch over you.”

Ciri was bubbling over with emotions as they strode out of the tavern and headed for the stables.

“Cintra’s only five days away if we ride hard,” she said, bouncing on her feet as they walked.

“Six days,” Juniper said. “We need to make a short detour to Cidaris.”

“What? Why?”

“Nilfgaard has a mage on their side. A powerful one. Neither you nor I would be a match for her, magically speaking, but I think I know someone who can help us.”

“The fire mage? From Sodden Hill? You _know_ her?”

She had heard the stories. A beautiful woman with violet eyes, holding back an entire army with a wall of flame.

“Unfortunately,” Juniper sighed.

***

Cidaris was certainly the place to go if you wanted coastal air. A bit too much coastal air, in Ciri’s opinion. The air was biting cold and her toes were growing numb in her boots. She plucked out a few notes on the lute as they walked, coaxing warmth back into her blood.

“So this is it, then,” Juniper muttered, drawing to a halt in front of a tiny shop. He stared up at the sign with a furrowed brow. _Cure what ails you,_ it said in neat cursive. “How the mighty have fallen.”

“Be nice,” Ciri admonished.

“Oh I’ll be nicer than I should,” Juniper said. “Alright. Stay close to me and don’t draw any attention to yourself, alright? She is _incredibly_ dangerous.”

And then he sighed, and shook out his arms, and changed right before her eyes. Dropped all of the tension that he carried in his spine, let his limbs go loose and gangly. Tilted up his head and painted a wry smile over his lips. And Ciri knew that she was looking at Jaskier, at the human that Juniper had been for twenty years.

He swung open the door and strode into the mage’s shop with a confidence Ciri knew he didn’t feel.

“Yennefer!” he said, cheer pouring from his voice like honeyed poison. “Long time no see.”

The fire mage—Yennefer, apparently—looked up from the potion she was stirring with an irritated frown that was rapidly replaced by shock. Her gaze flicked over Juniper, lingering on the swords on his back, the scars scrawled over his face, before settling on his eyes.

“Jaskier, what—?”

“You remember that curse you told me I had?” Juniper said. “Good news! It broke.”

“So it did. You came all the way to Cidaris to tell me that?”

Yennefer rapidly regained her composure, stirring at the potion and looking for all the world like humans regularly turned into witchers around her. Like it was a boring, everyday occurrence.

She was beautiful, the stories got that part right. But they left out her scars. Shiny marks ran up her arms from hand to elbow, disappearing under her sleeves, the skin tight and pink and painful looking. Burn wounds. And then there was her face. It looked like lightning was trapped beneath her skin, small blackish-purple lines spiderwebbing over her nose, forehead, cheekbones and trailing down her neck.

“No,” Juniper said. “To be honest, I’d be quite happy to never see you again. But it’s about Geralt.”

She laughed, rising smoothly to her feet and plucking the potion from the table, corking it with shaking fingers. Nerve damage, perhaps? Or was she just holding back fury?

“Why am I not surprised?” she said. “It’s always about Geralt.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“I understand perfectly well.”

She breezed past them, knocking shoulders with Juniper as she went.

“You might be content to follow him around like a lost puppy, _witcher,”_ she snarled. “But I have better things to do. Get out of my shop.”

“Nilfgaard took him.”

Yennefer froze in the doorway. Juniper stepped towards her. The looseness was gone from his limbs, the humanity was gone from his eyes. His bones were steel again, like he was stalking a monster.

“They’ve had him for months,” he said. “And whatever bad blood there is between you two, no man deserves that.”

Yennefer shook her head. Swore under her breath. But she turned around and went back to the table, settling down behind it with an exasperated sigh.

“Fine,” she muttered. “Start talking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MY WIFE has entered the chat.
> 
> Also, here's an incomplete list of what I've needed to google to write this fic  
> 1) Medicinal herbs  
> 2) Horse colors  
> 3) Monsters in the Witcher games  
> 4) How to fight the ice giant in the Witcher 3  
> 5) The Netflix interactive map, so many times that it is the top suggestion when I type "map" into google  
> 6) Where are all the witcher schools located?  
> And, most recently  
> 7) Lute chords


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! So originally I wanted to put the planning/Yennefer convo and the "they storm the castle" scenes in the same chapter, but it would have been 1) absurdly long and 2) VERY tonally dissonant so I decided to split it into two. However, I was really looking forward to posting the "storm the castle" chapter today so...lucky you! You get two chapters!
> 
> The next chapter will be up at some point this evening after I do all the Adult Stuff I need to do (i.e. voting and buying groceries) so keep an eye out for it!

“Start by explaining the girl," Yennefer said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“The girl has a name,” muttered Ciri. Juniper sucked in a breath between his teeth. Yennefer raised an eyebrow.

“Oh? What is it, then?”

“Cirilla.” She tilted up her chin, dropped her shoulders. Tried to make herself look as regal as possible. The memories were buried deep in her muscles but they were there. She had been a princess for years, after all, long before she was anything else.

“Cirilla of Rivia. I’m Geralt’s daughter,” she said.

“Geralt’s—?”

Yennefer cut herself off halfway through her question, leaning back in her chair and considering Ciri. A look of wonder swept over her face.

“You’re his child surprise,” she murmured. “Aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“He didn’t tell me his child surprise was the crown princess of Cintra,” she said. “That would’ve been nice to know.”

“Oh, you didn’t hear about Pavetta’s betrothal feast?” Juniper asked, making big sweeping motions with his hands as he spoke. The human looseness was back. “It was a spectacular night, truly wonderful, you would’ve liked it. There was a lot of ridiculous magic and obscure curses and—”

“And Geralt was there—why? Was he saving you from royal cuck—”

“Cupbearers, yes, thank you Yennefer! We were terrified I would be poisoned, see. Some rival bards had hatched a plot to rid the world of this beautiful voice.” He gestured theatrically at his throat. “So I had Geralt come along to be…my…poison…tester. Yes. Witcher immunity and all that.”

Somehow, Ciri felt like Juniper had asked Geralt along for a different reason. And as curious as she was, they needed to focus. Yennefer opened her mouth, no doubt to call Juniper’s story into question, but Ciri spoke before she could.

“If you two are done,” she snapped. “Can we start making the rescue plan now?”

Yennefer sighed and rubbed a hand over her forehead.

“Yes,” she said. “Right. When was Geralt taken?”

“About four months ago,” Juniper said. Yennefer hissed a breath in through her teeth.

“Any idea where they’re holding him?”

“We met a soldier from the Battle of Sodden who said that Nilfgaard is holding a bunch of prisoners in Cintra. She also said that Fringilla would be there.”

“Of course she would be,” muttered Yennefer.

“That’s why we wanted your help,” said Ciri.

“Well I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a rather inconvenient point in my…career, let’s say.”

“What?” Ciri said.

“Going up against Fringilla would be—"

“Excuse me, I must have misunderstood,” Juniper bit out through gritted teeth. “I thought I just heard you say that you were planning on leaving Geralt to rot because saving him would inconvenience your career.”

“Not as such,” said Yennefer. “But Fringilla is a powerful mage. More importantly than that, she’s a controlled mage. And right now I’m not.”

“What are you talking about?” Juniper asked. “You seemed perfectly in control last time we spoke.”

“I was. But the Battle of Sodden…using that much power, that much chaos, always has a price. You can see the physical toll with your own eyes.”

She waved a hand at her face, showing off both the burn scars and lightning marks.

“But what you can’t see is the magical toll.”

“What, did it drain you?” Ciri asked.

“No. But my chaos got a taste of true power and now it doesn’t want to be restrained to petty parlor tricks. Before Sodden, I could control my magic quite well. Aretuza saw to that. But now—”

She flopped her hands back down in her lap with a sigh.

“If you want the castle totally engulfed in fire, I can manage that. Or if you want bits of magic that are so small they’re practically useless—changing a color of a dress, making a piece of bread go stale—that I can manage, too. But if you want anything in the middle, spells that are actually helpful in battle, you’ll have to find another mage. I’m wrestling my chaos back to how it was, but it’s a long, slow process, and if Fringilla has already had Geralt for four months, then—”

She shook her head.

“You don’t have that long.”

“I’m sorry,” Juniper murmured.

Yennefer groaned.

“Please don’t get all sentimental on me.”

“Yennefer, I know what it’s like to not know who you are anymore—”

“I know who I am,” Yennefer snapped. “Don’t paint me with your insecurities, witcher.”

Juniper swallowed.

“Don’t call him that,” said Ciri.

“Cirilla—” Juniper began, but she was undeterred.

“Don’t. Call him that,” she said, staring Yennefer down. Yennefer blinked, startled. But then she smiled.

“Hmph. She has your spine, Jaskier. I’ll give her that much.”

She got to her feet and strode over to the large shelf against the back wall.

“I can’t help you fight in the way you might be imagining,” Yennefer said. “With blasts of power and portals. But I refuse to let myself be powerless, even for a little while.”

She plucked three vials from the shelf.

“This will coat the floor in ice,” she said, holding up a large blue bottle.

“This acts as a bomb.” A small red jar.

“And this will drive any man who inhales it to temporary madness.” The smallest of all, a tiny green vial.

“I’ve never heard of—the bomb one, yes, but the other two—” Juniper said, holding out a hand. She handed him the bottle and he held it up to the light, examining it.

“That’s because I invented them,” Yennefer said. “Among others. Small brushes of magic combined with the right herbs and a few rarer ingredients. Like I said, I refuse to be helpless.”

She took the bottle back from Juniper and snatched a satchel up from under her desk.

“Most of these require a bit of magic on activation,” she said, putting the bottle into the bag. “So I’ll be coming with you. Out of purely professional courtesy, you understand.”

“Of course,” said Juniper, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Not because you want to be Geralt’s knight in shining armor.”

“I believe that would be you,” she said, giving Juniper’s swords a pointed look. 

“Now, Cirilla.” She turned to her. “You’re welcome to stay here if you like, so long as you don’t touch anything. We’ll likely need to bring Geralt back here to heal anyways, so—”

“I’m coming with you.”

Yennefer raised an eyebrow.

“Not only does she have your spine, she has your ridiculous determination to be places that you don’t belong,” she told Juniper. “Perhaps I should check her for curses, see if she’s also a witcher in disguise.”

“I belong with Geralt,” said Ciri. “And I can help.”

“How?”

She pulled the lute off her back. Yennefer laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Sorry. But really, Jaskier, are you _trying_ to forge her into a miniature version of yourself? Is this a revenge ploy against Geralt? Because if so, I must say it’s rather brilliant.”

Ciri ignored her. She focused instead on the tall hourglass on Yennefer’s table. It was exquisite, a gold base inlaid with intricate flowers, glass blown as thin as an eggshell. Perfect for her demonstration.

She plucked out a scale, letting each note ring in the room. _Concentrate_. She closed her eyes. Let the sound fill her chest and vibrate through her teeth. Felt it vibrate through her, Juniper, Yennefer, the potions all around them. Focused on the vibration of the hourglass.

Note. Note. Note. _Fa. So. La._ Climbing higher and higher, coaxing shriller and shriller sounds out of the instrument. She felt the vibrations bunch and gather around the hourglass. Almost there.

_Ti. Do._

The glass shattered, exploding outwards in a storm of sharp shards and sand. Yennefer yelped, throwing up her arms to cover her face.

As the highest note in the scale rang out, Ciri’s voice joined it, sustaining the sound. The glass froze in the air, hanging as though from strings, catching the sunlight and sending it sparkling off the walls of the shop. She let the note ring out for a moment, then she brought her fingers back to the lute.

_Do._

She stopped singing.

_Ti. La._

The glass began to drift backwards. The sunlight whirled wildly over the walls.

_So. Fa._

It gathered at a single point over Yennefer’s table.

_Mi. Re. Do._

She took her fingers off the strings. The hourglass stood exactly where she had left it, sand trickling downwards in an endless stream. Yennefer lowered her arms, staring at her with unmasked awe.

“I can help,” Ciri repeated.

Yennefer ran a finger over the hourglass.

“So you can,” she said. “Well then.”

She looked at them both, and she smiled. It wasn’t sweet or warm. More like a wolf baring its teeth in anticipation of a kill.

“Let’s go save our witcher.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder to do your civic duty and vote if you live in a Super Tuesday state and are eligible! Democracy only dies if the people let it.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STOP! THIS IS THE SECOND CHAPTER I'VE POSTED TODAY! Go ahead and read chapter 11 if you haven't already :) 
> 
> ...  
> ...  
> ...I'm sorry in advance

When Ciri was a child, the sight of Cintra’s castle had always filled her with warmth. Its towers meant safety, and home, and often the end of a long journey. But now, as she crouched at the edge of the woods, it felt like all of those memories had been doused in oil and set aflame, burning and burning until all that was left was an ashy afterimage of what once was there. Those towers had killed her grandmother, those walls had held the bodies of everyone she’d ever known, those courtyards had been stained red with the blood of her family. And now, Nilfgaard had turned it into a terrifying prison, torturing soldiers and dissidents and _Geralt_ within the walls of her childhood home.

It was a slap in the face after a stab in the gut, a cruel and unnecessary humiliation. Ciri’s throat burned and she flexed her fingers in anticipation. She might be scared. Terrified even. Terrified of fighting and terrified of what she might find inside. But eclipsing that terror was a burning fury, an endless lake of emotion. She thought she might drown in it if she lingered there for too long. Or perhaps become something great, something powerful. She felt like a spinning coin, a plate precariously perched at the edge of a table. Destiny tugged at her, but she didn’t know where she would land.

Juniper’s hand slipped over her shoulder.

“Whatever happens,” he said. “Just know that I am here for you, okay? Always.”

She nodded, short and sharp. Grasped his elbow and squeezed, one last fleeting moment of connection.

“And I’m here for you,” she said.

He smiled at her, both pained and proud. Then he pulled out a potion and swallowed it down, blinking his eyes black.

“Whenever you’re ready, Yennefer.”

Yennefer rolled up her sleeves, and flung out her arms. The lightning scars sparked beneath her skin, covering her face in a blaze of purple light. Her chaos could be a flood or a trickle, she had said, and to get into the castle what they needed was a flood.

There was a great rumbling crash, like a mountain shrugging off a layer of snow, and the outer wall surrounding the castle folded in on itself. A storm of falling rocks and dust, sparking with the same brilliant purple that was covering Yennefer’s skin. She grinned wildly, and flicked her fingers out, sending huge chunks of the rock flying back towards the castle itself. Panicked shouts drifted towards them, along with the clanging of bells.

“Now!” Yennefer shouted and they were flying across the smooth plain of grass towards the castle. Juniper flicked his fingers up in the air, and they were surrounded by the warm yellow light of a Quen shield, just in time to block a hail of arrows. The rockfall had taken out the majority of the castle’s archers, but there were still some positioned in the tower itself. There were not enough, however, to get through Juniper’s shield. The three of them were across the plain in less than a minute, and quickly lost themselves in the wild whirl of dust Yennefer’s rockslide had caused.

Step one complete. Now to take the castle itself.

The main gate had been smashed through by one of the rocks, but a swarm of soldiers had already poured out to defend it. Juniper unsheathed his steel sword, swinging it by his side with a grin.

“Hi,” he said. “If you want to run now, I won’t chase you.”

No one took him up on the offer. She supposed their loyalty outweighed their fear of fighting a witcher. They charged forward with a roar. Yennefer pulled out one of the bomb potions and hurled it directly into the center of the mass, taking out a handful of them in a flurry of bangs and screams. Juniper leapt forward to meet two of them, sword flashing too fast for Ciri to even track. And Ciri plucked a few low notes out on the lute.

The air was full of noise already—screams and curses and steel-on-steel. Her music couldn’t compete with those sounds, she knew. Couldn’t drown them out. But it could bring them together, give them a theme. Organize the chaos. A sword slicing through flesh was met with a low, mournful chord, a frantic scream given a proper note on a higher string. The battle was a symphony and she was its composer.

She plucked through the themes until she felt the pace of the fight humming in her fingers. Then one by one, she dropped the sounds out. No more of Yennefer’s explosions, Juniper’s sword, shifting rock, and dying screams. Those all fell away until all that was left was the sound of the Nilfgaardian’s crashing armor. G major, over and over and over again. Solid steel.

And then she shifted her fingers. G minor.

Ten of the Nilfgaardians closest to them fell to the ground without so much as a scream. Their armor had pierced through their throats before they even realized what was wrong, the insides suddenly warped and sharpened. A protective suit turned into a coffin of needles.

Yennefer whistled.

“Damn. If Tissaia had gotten her hands on you…”

“Let’s not dwell on nasty could-have-beens,” Juniper panted, rushing through the main gate and into the castle. “Right, Cirilla. Lead the way. Quickly, before more of their men arm themselves. Or before Fringilla gets here.”

“Right.”

They sprinted pell-mell through the castle, making a beeline for the dungeons. Any knight who crossed them was met with fire, steel, and song.

“Cirilla, can you stun a few of them?” Yennefer asked, when they rounded a corner to the sight of a dozen furious Nilfgaardians.

“Sure,” Ciri gasped. Her chaos thrummed inside her, alive and furious and _delighted,_ but she was getting tired. She could feel it in her fingertips, in her throat, in the strange fogginess creeping over her brain.

 _For Geralt,_ she reminded herself. _You’re almost there._

She plucked out a few quick notes and three of the men fell to their knees. Then she was back to playing the armor chord. G major G major G major G minor.

This time only five of the Nilfgaardians fell. She sagged forward, lute weighing on her chest like an armful of rocks. Juniper growled and dove in front of her, fending off three vengeful soldiers with his sword.

“Whatever you’re planning on doing, do it!” he hollered at Yennefer.

“I _am!”_ Yennefer yelled back, kneeling down next to one of the dazed men. She pulled out one of the green vials and held it under his nose. He jerked violently, a shudder passing over him like an evil spirit.

“Feeling angry?” Yennefer asked him, stroking a hand down his face. “Yeah?”

 _“Yennefer!”_ shouted Juniper, as he sliced down one man that was quickly replaced by two more.

“I’m _on it!”_

She got to her feet and dragged the knight up with her.

“Let that anger out,” she told him, and then she shoved him back to his compatriots. He screeched out a battle cry, and drove a sword directly through one man’s throat, whirling on the others with vicious glee. Yennefer quickly gave the potion to the other two, then she was grabbing Juniper and Ciri and dragging them further down the hallway.

“Time to go!” she shouted. “Are we almost there?”

Ciri blinked back the exhaustion and hefted the lute higher up in her arms.

“Yeah. Yeah, next door on the left.”

One of Yennefer’s potions blew out the door, and they dashed down the stairs that led to the castle’s dungeon. Ciri’s legs felt like jelly. _Almost there. Almost there. Just a few more steps and you can see him again._

At the bottom of the steps waited two guards, swords drawn and shaking in their boots. Behind them was a huge cell full of shouting prisoners, cheering and laughing and banging on the bars.

“H-Halt,” stammered one of the guards. “In the name of N-Nilfgaard.”

Juniper stalked forward, brandishing the sword already spattered with blood and gore.

“I’ll give you one chance to live,” he said. “Give me the keys and tell me where you have the witcher.”

The other guard hollered and made a wild swing towards Juniper’s head. Juniper parried the blow lazily and slashed his sword across the man’s throat. Another slash and the first guard fell as well. He leaned down and plucked the keys off his belt loop, twirling them around his finger. Yennefer snatched them out of his hand and dashed to the cells.

“There are two swords here for the taking,” she said. “And plenty of dead men in the hallway upstairs with weapons of their own.”

She clicked open the lock, and stepped back with a smile.

“Go take back your freedom,” she said. “And make the men who thought they could take it from you _pay.”_

It was a tidal wave of people. A stampede. The first two escapees snatched up the swords and flew up the stairs, singing what sounded like old northern battle hymn. The rest rapidly followed, laughing and crying and singing along. Ciri swayed to lean against the wall and tried to fix the song in her memory while she scanned the horde of people for a flash of white hair.

Nothing.

Her stomach dropped.

Had the Nilfgaardian at the inn lied? Had the soldier in the tavern been wrong? Or what if they had killed him when the fighting started, what if they were too late, what if—

“You’re looking for the witcher, right?”

She snapped out of her panicked daze. One of the freed men had paused in front of Juniper, face flushed with excitement.

“Yes! Yes, we are.”

The man pointed down the hallway.

“Last cell on your right. The one with the solid door. They didn’t want to keep him with the rest of us. Think they were trying to break him with isolation.”

Juniper closed his eyes. Swallowed.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Thank _you,”_ the man said, clapping a hand over Juniper’s soldier. And then he was off, flying up the stairs to join his fellows. The three of them were left alone in the cellar.

“Okay,” said Juniper, steadying himself. “Okay.”

Yennefer jangled the keys against her leg and grabbed a torch off the wall.

“Cirilla,” she said. “Maybe you should wait out here.”

She shook her head. Pushed herself away from the wall.

“I’m not waiting another moment to see him.”

“It might not be a pretty sight.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

She'd seen him in her nightmares so many times, hurting and hurting and _hurting._

Yennefer opened her mouth to protest but Juniper shook his head at her. She closed her mouth and sighed.

“Alright then,” she said. “Let’s get him out of here.”

They walked side by side down the hall. Cold dread coiled in Ciri’s stomach, growing stronger and stronger with each step that they took. They’d had him for _four months._ What if his mind had broken, what if he didn’t recognize her, what if he’d forgotten his own name, what if—?

They stopped in front of a sturdy iron door with no windows. Ciri’s breath caught in her throat. Had they just thrown him in a lightless box and left him to rot?

“Ready?” Yennefer asked. Ciri nodded. Juniper squeezed down on her shoulder, a pillar of wordless comfort.

Yennefer flipped through the keys until she found the right one, and slipped it into the lock. The door swung open. She held up her torch, letting the firelight seep into every dark corner of the cell. And there, in one of those corners. Slumped over himself, arms wrapped loosely around his knees, face ducked down towards the ground. Geralt.

It took every inch of Ciri’s willpower to not immediately fly into his arms. But she couldn’t. She was scared it might break him.

He was thin. Very thin. They had taken his shirt, and she could see his ribs pressing against the skin, could see his bones shifting as he breathed. He was covered in cuts and bruises, mottled in red and yellow and purple. His hair was filthy, more gray than white, matted in clumps around his face. But the worst things she had pictured—flayed skin and missing limbs—thankfully remained products of her imagination.

He didn’t lift his head to face them, just curled up tighter. Probably thought they were one of his torturers. Fury sang in Ciri’s chest, bidding her to turn back around, march out the door, and let her fingers fly. To rain down death on everyone who had hurt him.

But that wasn’t what Geralt needed. He needed her, needed her to be there, to tell him it was okay. To pull him out of that cell and help him heal. The bruises would fade, and he’d gain back the weight, and in time he’d lose the beaten-animal flinches, and everything would be okay again. These months could become just a nightmare, something pushed aside in the light of day.

“Geralt?” Juniper asked, letting go of Ciri’s shoulder to take a cautious step into the cell.

He gasped and snapped his head up, and Ciri’s hope died on her tongue.

“Jaskier,” he rasped. “Jask, what—how are you—what are you doing here?”

And all of her nightmares of the clearing had felt real.

“I’m here,” Juniper whispered, teary shock rippling through his voice. He slipped over to Geralt’s side and knelt down in front of him. Held a trembling hand up to Geralt’s face, tracing the burn scars spattered like paint across his skin.

But one had felt more real than any of the others, real enough to make her vomit on a noblewoman’s carpet.

“You need to leave,” Geralt said, though he leaned into Juniper’s touch like it was the best thing he’d ever felt. Juniper made a horrible strangled sound. Geralt continued, undeterred.

“You need to get out of here, they’ll—they’ll hurt—you need to stay safe, I—”

“You don’t need to worry about protecting me,” Juniper said, and he sounded like he wanted to scream, his voice pained and angry and cracked in two.

And she had told herself it was just a dream, just like the rest of them, but—

But Geralt wasn’t reacting to the fact that Juniper was a witcher, despite the fact that he was hovering right in front of him, all scarred skin and black eyes and bloody swords. He’d only reacted to the sound of his voice, to his touch.

“We’re getting you out.”

“We?”

She and Yennefer were standing in the doorway, right behind Jaskier, and Geralt wasn’t acknowledging either of them. He didn’t even seem aware there were other people in the room. He just kept staring at Juniper, eyes wide and shocked and—

Milky.

Faded.

Empty.

And he didn’t speak to Ciri, didn’t smile at her and offer her a hug and tell her that yes, yes it was going to be okay.

Because he couldn’t see her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...yay, happy reunion?


	13. Chapter 13

She couldn’t hold herself back another second. She slipped into the cell on shaking legs, setting the lute down next to the doorway. Chills raced up and down her arms and her throat felt as dry as a desert. She had dreamed of this moment so many times, dreamed of finding him and hugging him and finally reuniting with her family and now—now she didn’t know what to say.

“Who’s there?” asked Geralt, eyes flickering back and forth like they were still trying to pull information from his surroundings. Like if he just looked _hard enough_ he’d be able to break through the darkness.

“It’s me,” she whispered. Geralt’s face crumpled like he had just taken a blow to the gut.

“Ciri?”

“Yes,” she choked. Another step forward. “Yes, it’s me, I’m here, I—”

He opened up his arms and she flung herself into them with a sob. Clung to his too-warm, too-skinny shoulders and gave herself over to tears. He clutched at her desperately, one hand bunched in the fabric of her cloak, one cradling the back of her head.

“I’m sorry—” she gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, rocking her back and forth. “ _Don’t be._ You got out. Lived. Kept yourself safe. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“But they _hurt_ you, they blinded—”

“It was worth it,” he said, hugging her impossibly tighter. He was shaking against her, or maybe she was shaking against him, she couldn’t tell. 

“I love you,” she sobbed. “I _missed_ you.”

“I missed you too.”

She tucked her face into his shoulder and tried to get her breathing under control. They were still in danger, she reminded herself. Still buried in the dungeons of the castle, and they needed to leave, needed to get Geralt out of here. But she didn’t want to let go of him.

She unwound one arm from Geralt’s back and held it out to the side, a wordless gesture. There was a pause, and then Juniper was wrapping his arms around them both, holding them all close, close, _close._ Geralt jumped, startled—and scared, he was scared, and she was going to find the people who did this and tear them to shreds, she was—but then he settled, breathing slow and deep as he drank them both in.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Juniper murmured. “We’ll all be okay.”

“You’re alive,” Geralt whispered back. She wasn’t sure who it was directed to, her or Juniper or both of them. “You’re alive, you’re—"

His chest hitched with suppressed sobs and Ciri wanted to scream. Because she had never seen him cry, not once, not ever, and if there was ever a time to break down, this was it. And he was still holding it back. Why? Who had taught him that—?

“I don’t want to break up the reunion,” Yennefer said, and there was some actual reluctance in her voice, beneath the dryness. “But we need to move.”

“Yennefer?”

“Yes, Geralt.”

“What are you—?”

“Doing here? Please. Like I was going to let Jaskier run a rescue party all by himself. He would’ve gotten himself killed and then who’d appreciate my rapier wit?”

“Thanks, Yennefer,” Juniper muttered.

Geralt laughed, despite everything. It wasn’t much, just a soft huff of air, but it made some of the tension slip out of Ciri’s back. He was still there—still wry and reluctantly amused. Still Geralt. They had hurt him but they hadn’t broken him.

“Can you walk?” Yennefer asked, slipping forward to join the knot of people in the cell. Geralt nodded, extricating himself from their embrace.

“Woah, wait, don’t try to—” Juniper protested, but Geralt ignored him, fumbling for the wall and using it to leverage himself to his feet. He swayed, and when he tried to take a step forward, he nearly collapsed. Yennefer dove in front of him, catching him just in time to stop him from hitting the ground.

“I can walk,” Geralt said, gritting his teeth and panting against the pain.

“Try again,” said Yennefer, setting him back on his feet.

“With some help.”

“There you go.” She ducked under Geralt’s armpit, draping his arm over her shoulders, and wrapped one of her arms around his waist, holding him snugly against her side. Juniper made a soft noise of protest, moving to Geralt’s other side, but Yennefer glared him away.

“You’ll need both hands free,” she said. “I’ve got him."

“Why’s he need his hands free?” Geralt asked, his voice slurring slightly. He was drooping against Yennefer’s side. Had standing up really exhausted him that much?

“He’s—”

Juniper caught her eye and shook his head frantically. And yeah, learning that Juniper was a witcher was probably not going to help Geralt at this very moment.

“—picked up some sword skills in the past few years,” Yennefer finished. “Guess that’s what happens when you stop keeping a witcher around for protection.”

Geralt made a sound like a cat being strangled and Juniper’s glare could have melted steel. _Not now,_ he mouthed. Yennefer rolled her eyes.

There was history there, Ciri knew. The last time Juniper and Geralt had parted ways, it hadn’t been on good terms. She knew it in the way that Geralt had looked for him, panicked and sad. Knew it in the way Juniper had looked at Geralt’s medallion. But Juniper was right. There was a time and a place to dwell on the past, and now wasn’t the time, and this nightmarish cell wasn’t the place.

“We’ll be out of here soon,” Ciri said, taking Geralt’s hand as they shuffled out of the cell. She bent down to snatch up the lute on the way out. “We’ll be out, and Yennefer can fix your eyes—”

“I can try,” Yennefer corrected, voice soft and grim. Ciri ignored her. They had to fix this. They _had to._

“And it’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”

Geralt squeezed down on her hand and gods, his grip was so weak. He’d lost so much strength—how often had they been feeding him? Once a day? Once a week? She squeezed back, trying to keep herself gentle despite the protective fury burning a hole in her stomach. Was this how witchers felt, when they came upon a town half-decimated by a monster? Angry and guilty and heartbroken all at once? How could they bear it, feeling like this all the time? She needed to know because she thought she might feel like this forever now. Something had cracked inside her chest, and all she wanted to do was scream it out.

The hallway was clear. Ciri’s heart felt like a fluttering bird in her chest. Almost out, almost safe, almost home.

The shadows at the end of the hallway rippled, and Ciri’s heart froze mid-beat. A woman stepped out of the shadows, gathering her skirts around her. She looked at the four of them with something like bored irritation, like a mother whose child had tracked mud over the carpet for the twentieth time. Fringilla.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” she said, striding forward with calm, even steps. And she was talking about Geralt like his was a _thing,_ a possession, something that could be owned. Geralt flinched back, pulling at Ciri’s hand. Chaos squirmed in her throat, the previous exhaustion bleeding away into hot rage.

“I’ll have to punish you for that, Yennefer of Vengerberg. And you, witcher,” she snarled. “Trying to escape again. I would have thought you’d learned your lesson. That losing your sight would’ve taught you where you belong. But I suppose I underestimated your kind’s stubbornness.”

She had blinded him.

She had done this.

Juniper roared and leapt forward, swinging his sword wildly towards her head. She waved her hand like she was swatting away an irritating insect, and Juniper went flying. He crashed into a wall and collapsed into a boneless heap on the ground.

“Jaskier!” Geralt yelled, trying to squirm out of Yennefer’s grip. She held him fast, even as she fumbled in her bag for one of her potions.

“Oh, you care about him? That’s good to know. Though I suppose we don’t need to torture you anymore, strictly speaking. Now that the princess is here.”

And—

It was about her.

They weren’t just torturing him for fun, they were torturing him to get to _her._ She should have known that, should have put the pieces together. Maybe she had known, deep down. Maybe she’d just been ignoring it.

“Though I’d regret killing you without breaking you first,” Fringilla continued, speaking more to herself than Geralt. “Not when I’ve wasted so much time on you. So maybe I’ll persuade Nilfgaard to let me keep you. Keep working. Perhaps I’ll take your hearing next.”

Juniper groaned, shoving himself to his feet. Fringilla waved her hand again, pinning him to the wall with a choked scream. He clawed at his throat, gasping for air. Yennefer plucked out a bottle and hurled it at Fringilla’s feet, but Fringilla snapped her fingers and it burst into a rain of flower petals.

“Alchemy, Yennefer? Really? I’d heard you’d lost your powers but this is truly a new low.”

Juniper was no match for her.

Yennefer was no match for her.

Ciri took a deep breath and let go of Geralt’s hand. Stepped forward and planted herself in front of Geralt and Yennefer, chin held high.

“Ciri, no!” shouted Geralt. She heard a scuffle behind her, Yennefer no doubt holding him back. But she didn’t turn to look. Just brought her lute up in front of her. Fringilla laughed.

“What are you going to do, princess?” she asked. “Sing me a lullaby?”

And Ciri thought about Geralt. About everything he was. Protective and safe and kind beneath a layer of thorns. She thought of the stories he had told her, of the things he had taught her. She thought of his hands, sharpening a sword, combing through Roach’s fur, skinning a rabbit for their dinner. His eyes, quick and bright and shining. He was her destiny. Her family. Her _father._ And the woman in front of her had tried to rip all of that away. Had nearly succeeded.

The chaos gathered in her arms and it was loving and furious all at once. She flicked her fingers over the strings.

Once.

“What are you doing?” Fringilla asked, a hint of incredulous laughter in her voice.

Twice.

“I’ve had enough of this game,” she said, making to take a step forward, only to find that she couldn't move.

“What—?” she gasped, staring down at the bark creeping up her legs.

Ciri smiled and the chaos inside her sang its approval, skittering through her veins, eager for _more, more, more._

Three times.

She pulled at the well of love in her heart and the chaos came flooding out, dancing over Fringilla’s skin and swirling up her torso. Fringilla screamed, but it was quickly cut off as her vocal cords were replaced by wood. She reached out, trying desperately to grasp at Ciri, but her arms were growing and splitting and fixing into place, leaves sprouting from her fingers. She grew up and out, branches sprawling across the ceiling, stretching for sunlight that they would never find.

Juniper fell away from the wall, sucking in huge lungfuls of oxygen.

“Oh Cirilla,” he gasped. “Oh you beautiful, wonderful girl, that was _incredible.”_

“What just happened?” Geralt asked faintly.

“Your daughter just turned Fringilla into a tree,” Yennefer said. Though she tried to mask it, she was clearly impressed. “With the power of music.”

“Hmm. Okay. Okay, um—”

“Is this a juniper tree?” Juniper asked, reaching up and pulling down a branch for inspection. “Cirilla. Why?”

“…first thing I thought of?”

“Fair enough,” he laughed.

“It’ll die down here,” Yennefer remarked. “No sunlight. No rain. It’ll die slow.”

Ciri looked up at the tree that was once Fringilla, the woman who had delighted in the prospect of breaking apart her family.

“Good,” she said.

She went back to Geralt’s side, took his hand again.

“It’s over,” she said. “It’s over. She won’t ever touch you again.”

He nodded, dazed.

“We’ll talk when we get out of here,” Juniper said. “Explain everything. For now, let’s just—let’s just go.”

They walked out of the dungeon side by side, and they didn’t stop to look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if you're reading this you're probably a fan of Angst(tm) and Drama(tm) and I just wanted to let y'all know that I do have another Witcher fic up that falls into both of those categories. It's called 'the soul knows the rest' and it's a daemon AU one-shot (that I might turn into a two-shot at some point). Go check it out if you're interested!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters are just getting longer and longer, I need to calm down.
> 
> Enjoy the "everyone gets hugs" chapter

“The stables,” Geralt grunted as they staggered out of the castle.

“What?” Yennefer asked.

“Almost killed her, but…said it’d be a waste of a good horse.”

“Roach?” Ciri asked. Geralt nodded.

“It’s just a stupid—” Yennefer started, but Juniper was already running off to the stables. She sighed and kept tugging Geralt towards the edge of the forest.

“No,” he snarled, twisting around in her grip. “No, I need—”

“Jaskier’s getting her, calm down.”

They were barely ten feet into the trees when they heard hoofbeats behind them. Ciri whirled around, fingers already on the lute strings, but it was only Juniper, sitting astride a familiar brown mare.

“She wasn’t happy to let me ride her,” he said, swinging himself off Roach’s back. “Loyal beast, this one.”

He took her by the reins and led her over to Geralt. Though she didn’t need much leading. She broke into a light trot, tugging the reins out of Juniper’s hands in her haste to get to her master. She halted just in front of Geralt, leaning down and bumping his chest with her head. Yennefer let go of him, letting him sag bonelessly against Roach. He splayed a hand over her forehand, rubbing his fingers absently over her fur. His other hand wrapped around her neck to tangle in her mane.

“Sorry, Roach,” he said. “Sorry. Bet you want to get back on the road, huh?”

She nickered softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

“I have a safe house about an hour from here,” Yennefer said, striding over to her own horse. “It’s warded well. Should keep all but the most powerful mages out and Nilfgaard doesn’t have a powerful mage on their side anymore.”

“Ciri, you take Chamomile,” Juniper said, hoisting her on his horse’s back. “I’ll ride with Geralt.”

Roach bent her legs without prompting.

“Good girl,” Juniper cooed at her as he helped Geralt into the saddle. “Smart girl.”

“Stop flirting with my horse.”

“Of all the—I would _never_ besmirch Roach’s honor like that, you brute.”

He swung himself up behind Geralt, reaching around his waist to take the reins.

“Alright, Yennefer,” he said. “Lead the way.”

***

Yennefer’s safe house turned out to be a medium-sized cottage at the edge of a tiny town. It looked cozy. Idyllic even, surrounded bright flowers and lush vegetables. Ciri guessed that she had some sort of charm over her garden. Not even the castle’s plants had looked so perfect, and they’d had a small army of gardeners.

They stabled the horses and half-led, half-carried Geralt inside the house. His strength was fading rapidly, the short ride having sapped what the rescue itself hadn’t. She thought of all the long days of travel, riding for hours and hours to get to their next contract. How long would it be before he was strong enough for that? Would he ever be again?

Yennefer brought them into her parlor and propped Geralt up on the couch.

“The bruises and cuts, we can fix those later,” she said. “It doesn’t look like you have any serious injuries, unless I’m missing something internal?”

He shook his head.

“They gave you fireblood, then?” Yennefer asked. Geralt hesitated. Ciri’s breath caught in her throat. She had heard of fireblood, had heard soldiers whispering about it within Cintra’s walls. A potion that set the victim’s nerves on fire without leaving a single mark. Handy, if you wanted to interrogate someone for a long time.

“You’ve been there for four months, Geralt. You’re not nearly injured enough to have been under Fringilla’s care for that long unless they were causing pain without injury. Did they give you fireblood?”

“Yes.”

Ciri closed her eyes.

They said that a single day under the potion’s influence was enough to drive most men mad.

“Are you still in pain?”

They said a week was enough to overload the nerves, to make them constantly register _pain pain pain_ long after the potion had worn off.

“Yes.”

“I’ll get you on a potion regimen to combat the nerve damage,” Yennefer said. “You should be back to normal within a month.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Let’s take a look at your eyes.”

She flicked her fingers, a bit hesitantly, and a pale white light curled out of them. It dissipated into the air, like steam rising off a lake on a winter’s morning. She did it again. Again, eyes narrowed and intent.

“What are you doing?” Juniper asked.

“Making sure my chaos is controlled enough to not burn his face off,” she said, flicking her fingers one more time. “I haven’t tried any diagnostic magic since Sodden.”

She watched the light fade away and dusted her hands on her dress.

“We should be fine,” she said.

_“Should be?”_

She ignored Juniper’s squawking in favor of bringing her hands up to Geralt’s temples, framing his eyes. He flinched back at first, before gritting his teeth and holding himself as still as metal.

“This won’t hurt,” Yennefer told him, running one thumb over his skin. “It’ll just feel a bit warm.”

He relaxed a bit at that, but he was still tense. Wary. Like he was expecting a blow. Ciri’s fingers curled into fists and Juniper squeezed her shoulder. Trying to comfort her or trying to get some of the tension out of his own hands? He let go and started rubbing light circles into her upper back. Comfort, then.

Yennefer closed her eyes and let a pulse of smoky light spill from her hands. It ghosted across Geralt’s skin, tracing the pattern of the scars, before slipping into his eyes. It ate up his irises and pupils, turning both of his eyes into miniature stars. Like instead of drinking a potion, he had drank up part of the sun. The four of them sat together in tense silence for what felt like hours. Ciri’s lungs were leaden in her chest, capable only of shallow, far-apart breaths. She leaned forward, staring at Geralt like she could read the truth in Yennefer’s magic. _Just let him be okay,_ she prayed to any god who might be listening. _Just let this be fixable._

Yennefer leaned back. Dropped her hands from Geralt’s face. The light faded away, leaving only unfocused yellow irises. Silence reigned for another long, long moment. Then Yennefer sighed. She shook her head, and Ciri knew that her prayers had gone unanswered.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Geralt slumped forward, bracing his arms on his knees. Yennefer’s hand hovered over his shoulder like she wasn’t sure if she should touch him or not. When she spoke again, her voice was very quiet.

“Fringilla wanted this to be permanent,” she murmured. “Whatever potion she threw on you, she wove so many curses and traps into it that I don’t think I could even try to fix your eyes without killing you in the process.”

“So I’m stuck like this,” Geralt said, and his voice was eerily calm. “Forever.”

“Yes,” whispered Yennefer. Her hand came down on his shoulder at last. “I—Yes. I’m so sorry.”

Tears brimmed in Ciri’s eyes, and she choked back a sob by biting her fist. Geralt wasn’t crying. Geralt wasn’t crying and he was the one that—he was the one that was blind, forever, apparently and—and he wasn’t crying, he was staying strong so she should—she should—

“Yennefer,” he said, and some of that calmness was cracking, just a little. Pain slipping in at the edges of his voice. Faint tremors were running up and down his body. “Can you take Ciri out of here?”

“No,” Ciri protested. “No, I don’t want—"

“Please,” he said. He was shaking in earnest now.

“I’ve got him,” Juniper murmured. He gave her one last squeeze before he let go, darting to Geralt’s side. He showed none of Yennefer’s reservations about touching him, slipping an arm around his shoulders and tugging him close.

“Come on,” Yennefer told her. She sounded exhausted. “Come on, little bird. Let’s let them be.”

“But Geralt—”

“He doesn’t want you to see him like this.” She put a hand on Ciri’s back and steered her out of the room. “It’ll help him more to know that you’re safe.”

She let herself be led, though her heart felt like hot iron in her chest, and her throat would surely burst with all the tears she was holding back. Geralt needed someone to comfort him right now, and as badly as she wanted to be that person, she didn’t even know how to start. He had always been the one to comfort _her,_ to tell her stories after nightmares and teach her to fight to ward off her feelings of helplessness. All careful words and determined action. And yes, he’d been sad before, anxious before, flashes of emotions that he’d insisted he couldn’t feel, hurts that she’d chased away with a hug or a kind word. But this was a storm. A hurricane. There was no running from it, no fighting it, no battening down the hatches and praying for survival. And she felt lost in the face of it, as lost as she had been when she had first fled Cintra.

“It’s my fault,” she gasped when she finally got her throat to cooperate.

“You sound like your father.” She steered Ciri into her workshop—a small room brimming with herbs and potions, filled almost entirely by a long wooden table—and shut the door behind them.

“He always seeks to blame himself for everything,” she continued, dumping Ciri on a wooden chair. “I think he’d find a way to blame himself for an earthquake.”

“This really is my fault.”

“How? Because Nilfgaard wanted you? Because some truly sick people thought the best way to do that would be to torture a man who knew nothing?”

“Because I could have _saved him.”_

The words came out as a half-scream and the room was filled with the sound of rattling glass as the potions rocked on their shelves. Yennefer froze.

“Sorry,” Ciri gasped, choking down her chaos. “Sorry.”

Yennefer pulled her to her feet and led her to the other side of the room, yanking open another door.

“I think we should have this conversation away from the volatile potions,” she said, steering Ciri through it and into a small but elegant library.

“I ran,” Ciri said. She walked over to a plush couch on shaking legs and all but collapsed into the cushions. “He told me to run and I ran. I _ran,_ and I _left him,_ and they took him, and—I could’ve stopped them. If I’d stayed.”

“Could you turn a woman into a tree, when you ran?” Yennefer asked. She shook her head.

“Make a suit of armor into a weapon?”

“No, but I knew I had power.”

She looked down at her hands.

“When I scream,” she said. “It’s like an explosion. A shockwave of chaos. I’d done it a few times, I knew I could, I—”

“And let me guess? That shockwave kills whatever it touches?”

She nodded.

“So you’re blaming yourself for…not killing Geralt?”

“You don’t _understand.”_ The sob finally broke out of her throat.

“Then help me understand! Because all I’m hearing is that you’re wallowing in guilt for no good reason.”

“It doesn’t kill witchers,” she cried. “It doesn’t—Nilfgaard caught up with me and Juniper and they told me they were t-torturing Geralt and I didn’t—I couldn’t stop it so I screamed, and—”

“And Jaskier lived,” Yennefer finished.

“Y-yes.”

“So you discovered that your chaos didn’t kill witchers when it was already too late,” Yennefer sighed. “Destiny has been cruel to you, little bird.”

“It’s been crueler to Geralt,” she said. “And Juniper.”

“Perhaps. But pain isn’t a contest.”

She hesitated for a moment, before she reached forward, and tangled her scarred fingers in Ciri’s hair.

“Pain isn’t a contest,” she repeated. “And if it was, guilt would not win it. Needless guilt is the enemy of happiness, and we’ve all had enough of that stolen already. You did the best you could with what you knew at the time. What was done to Geralt, to Jaskier, to you—it was cruel. It was unnecessary. But blaming yourself will not fix any of it. You really want to spit in Destiny’s eye? In the eyes of all the people who hurt you? Then sing, little bird. Sing, and love, and forgive yourself.”

There was something vulnerable in Yennefer’s voice, in the way that she stroked Ciri’s hair. Like she was expecting Ciri to push her away, to snarl at her kindness, to trample on her words. And the instinct was there. _How dare you tell me not to feel guilty? How dare you act like this was inevitable, how dare you act like I couldn’t have done something?_ But—

Guilt is the enemy of happiness.

Maybe she was right.

She leaned forward, giving Yennefer plenty of time to pull away, and hugged her.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Yennefer’s hands shook against her back.

“You’re welcome,” she said. She rested her chin on the top of Ciri’s head, and they sat there and watched as the setting sun painted the sky in brilliant orange fire. When the day faded into soft purple dusk, Yennefer sighed and unraveled herself from Ciri.

“Should we go check on the boys?” she asked, getting to her feet and offering Ciri a hand. Ciri took it and, with no small amount of trepidation, followed Yennefer out of the room.

When they reached the parlor, Geralt and Juniper were still sitting where they’d left them. Geralt was sagged against Juniper’s side, and Juniper was rubbing slow circles into his shoulder.

“I think the adrenaline finally wore off,” Juniper said. His voice was thick. “He’s out cold.”

Juniper’s eyes were rimmed with red, and Ciri could see tear tracks drying on Geralt’s cheeks. Her heart twisted in her chest.

“We should all get some sleep,” Yennefer said. “I have plenty of bedrooms.”

“Good idea,” Juniper murmured, but he didn’t move to get up. Yennefer didn’t turn around and head for one of the bedrooms.

“I don’t want to leave him,” Ciri said, vocalizing what they were all thinking. Juniper nodded.

“I’ll build a fire,” Yennefer said. “And fetch some blankets. We can sleep down here tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, my original plan for Roach was that the Nilfgaardians killed her and that she was the only food that Geralt was given for like a month. But then I decided that that would be too grimdark. For this fic at least. So instead, y'all get a sweet "boy and his horse" reunion.
> 
> Next chapter is one that I have been VERY excited about, so get pumped


	15. Chapter 15

Ciri woke slowly for once, not jolted out of sleep by nightmares. She was buried in warmth, cocooned in furs and firelight, and she felt safe in a way she hadn’t in months. The tears still burned at the back of her throat, the horror still lingered in the corners of her brain, but her family was here. Geralt was here.

“There are other blind witchers, you know,” murmured a voice, low and careful. Toying at the edges of a fresh wound. Juniper.

She cracked her eyes open.

It was still dark out, the kind of dark that only fell in the very early hours of the morning. Geralt and Juniper sat silhouetted against the fireplace, leaning into each other like they were each grasping for assurance that the other person was there. She didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t let them know she was awake. A delicate kind of peace had settled over them, and she didn’t want to be the one to shatter it.

“Are there?” Geralt asked. Sleep still clung to the edges of his voice. Or maybe he was just tired, in a more existential way.

“I’ve heard of them. Or one, at least. He’s from the School of the Griffin.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s not so far-fetched. I mean, the trials enhanced everything, right?” Juniper murmured. He traced his fingers idly over the back of Geralt’s hand. “Not just your sight. Your hearing, smell, all of it.”

“Yes. It’s—” Geralt swallowed. “It’s a lot. Right now. I—it’s always been loud, but normally it’s understandable. And now it’s just—I don’t understand where all the noise is coming from, I don’t know what I can ignore and what’s important, I—”

“I know,” Juniper said. “I know. But you’ll learn, in time. You’ll learn how to make sense of it all.”

“Will I?” Geralt asked, and Ciri had never attributed the word _hysterical_ to him before, but she couldn’t think of any other way to describe the way he sounded in that moment.

“You will,” Juniper said, steady and undeterred. “You _will._ It will take time, but this won’t be the thing to break you, Geralt.”

“I think I already am. Broken.”

Ciri felt sick. They had saved him, and he was healing, and they were all together, and it still wasn’t enough. He still felt—

“No.”

Juniper shifted so that more of his weight was pressing into Geralt’s side.

“No. You’re not. You’ve still got your sense of humor—and you have one, don’t deny it. You’ve still got so much tenderness for Ciri. You’ve still got so much _love,_ Geralt. You might have some jagged edges but you’re not broken. You’re still you.”

And it was everything that Ciri wanted to tell him, given voice and eloquence. Gods bless Juniper.

“I was made to fight monsters.”

“And you _will._ Once you gain some weight and we fix your nerves. And you’ll need training, of course. But you can go back to the Path, go back to saving towns from drowners and selkimores. If that’s what you want. And if it’s not—Geralt, you are so much more than a monster slayer. Even if you never picked up a sword again, it wouldn’t mean that you’re broken.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t sound convinced. Juniper made an exasperated sound in the back of his throat.

“Do you remember what you said to me?” he asked, switching tactics. “Back when we fought the djinn. When we found out I was cursed.”

“Mmm.”

“I was so terrified of losing my hands. Losing my voice. And you told me that no matter what I lost, no matter what changed about me, I would still be me. Do you remember that?”

“…yes.”

“Good. All I’m asking, Geralt, is that you extend some of that kindness to yourself.”

“I don’t—I don’t know if I can.”

And Ciri wanted to find every single person that had ever tied Geralt’s worth to how many ghouls he could kill and give them the same treatment she’d given Fringilla. Fury writhed in her stomach like a frantic bird. How had she missed this? They’d traveled together for a _year,_ how had she missed this?

“I know that might seem like a lot to ask,” Juniper said. He lifted his hand, bringing it up to nestle in Geralt’s hair. “And I know that you’re not about to change your way of thinking overnight. I know you’ve got a lot of deep-running wounds. But just try, okay? Just try to be a little kinder to yourself. For me.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

They sat curled together like that for several minutes. The firelight danced off Geralt’s hair, and Ciri was reminded of all the nights they’d spent by the campfire, Geralt showing her how to skin rabbits, how to cook over coals, how to find her way by the night sky, how to whittle bits of wood into little statues. Warmth bloomed in her stomach. They’d have that again. She and Geralt and Juniper and even Yennefer. Learning and loving around a fire.

She’d nearly drifted off again when Geralt broke the silence.

“Did…did the curse break?”

Juniper sucked in a sharp breath. The silence shifted from comfortable to tense.

“Yes. It did.”

“What was it?”

A long pause. Ciri’s stomach flipped over, tying her guts into knots.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Geralt said. “I know I don’t have the right—”

“No, I—I need to tell you, it’s pretty—it’s pretty big. It changes a lot.”

“Are you dying?”

“No! No, gods no. No. It’s just—I’d planned out dozens of conversations with you, you know? I had all these plans for if we ever saw each other again. I’d thought through every way you could possibly react. But I never thought I’d have to tell you.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare apologize. Not for this. Just—”

He hesitated.

“Give me your hand,” he said at last. Geralt did without even blinking.

“You’re missing a finger,” Geralt said, and there was a smoldering anger in his voice. Juniper laughed, and there wasn’t a smidge of humor in it.

“Trust me when I say that’s not the worst part.”

“Jaskier—”

“Just let me show you, okay?” His voice cracked. Ciri half wanted to throw off the blankets and go to their side, to give Juniper a hug. But she was frozen in place, hardly daring to breathe.

“Okay,” Geralt whispered. Juniper took a shuddery breath, and then he pulled Geralt’s hand up to his face.

“Jaskier,” Geralt choked. His fingers fluttered over the scars. “Jaskier, what _happened_ to you?”

“Werewolf,” Juniper said.

“Where?”

“I—”

_“Where?”_

“It’s dead,” Juniper said. “I killed it.”

“You killed—?”

“The curse didn’t undo a werewolf attack,” Juniper said. His voice was shaking. _He_ was shaking, hard enough that Ciri could see it where she was lying.

“Then what _did_ it undo?” Geralt asked.

In response, Juniper guided Geralt’s hand from his face to his neck. Pressed his fingers over his pulse point.

“This.”

“Your heartbeat.” Geralt recoiled, fingers flying from Juniper’s neck like it had burned him. “It’s—”

“Like yours,” Juniper said, and was he crying? It sounded like it.

“You’re a witcher,” Geralt whispered.

“Yes,” Juniper said and yes, he was definitely crying. She could see his tears glittering in the firelight.

_“Fuck.”_

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Geralt brought his hands back up to Juniper’s face, thumbing away the tears.

“I don’t—” he said. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

“Not great,” Juniper said, leaning into the touch. “Awful, actually.”

“When did it break?”

Juniper froze. He cupped Geralt’s hand in one of his, twining their fingers together.

“After the dragon hunt,” he said.

“No.”

“I made it down to the base of the mountain. Got into an inn. And then—”

_“No.”_

“Yes. I’d already lost my best friend,” Juniper said, and there’s an undercurrent of anger there, and desperate, hopeless sadness. “And then I lost everything else.”

“I—how are you still sitting here with me? Comforting me? After I—gods, Jaskier, I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” Juniper said. Not _it’s okay._ Not _don’t be._ He wasn’t giving Geralt absolution. _I’d already lost my best friend,_ he had said, and what had Geralt done to him?

“You don’t need to stay,” Geralt said, though it sounded like it pained him to say it. “You don’t need to forgive me. I don’t deserve it.”

He tried to pull away but Juniper refused to let go, clutching his fingers with a look of furious determination in his eyes.

“I know I don’t need to forgive you,” he said. “But I’m choosing to.”

“Jaskier—”

“I’m choosing to forgive you,” he continued, voice rising. “And it isn’t out of guilt, or pity, or obligation, or whatever else you’ve got in your head. It’s a gift. To you, yes, but also to myself. The world has taken so much from us, Geralt. And after everything we’ve been through, we deserve some _fucking_ happiness.”

His voice broke on the last word, tears flowing down his face in earnest now. Geralt tugged him forward and wrapped his arms around his back, clinging to him like he was made out of smoke, like he’d vanish if he let go of him. Juniper sagged against him, face buried in the crook of his neck.

“Don’t we?” he asked, voice muffled. “Don’t we deserve some happiness?”

“Of course we do,” Geralt said, and she thought she could hear some tears in his voice too. “Of course we do.”

They didn’t say anything after that, just kept holding each other like they’d die if they separated. Ciri’s eyes drooped shut. Sleep was calling to her, tugging her down, and she gave in to it with a faint smile on her lips. They’d be okay. They would get through this.

She didn’t dream that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy reveal, ya filthy animals. Hope it lived up to the build-up!
> 
> So in case you haven't noticed already, I've turned this verse into a series! I'll be writing a bunch of little fics and one-shots that either exist outside this fic's timeline or are in a different POV. There's already one chapter up of a story that follows Juniper immediately after the twenty-year undoing breaks, so go check that out if you want P A I N.
> 
> Other possible ideas involve Geralt's captivity in Nilfgaard/him dealing with his blindness, Geralt and Juniper's conversation in chapter 14, Yennefer forcing the boys to sit down and talk about their trauma, Yennefer's journey as she struggles to piece her magic back together, Juniper and Geralt meeting up with other witchers (and those witchers immediately plotting horrible, bloody revenge on the people who hurt their brothers), a good old fashioned monster hunt featuring the whole gang being badass, etc. 
> 
> If any of these ideas sound particularly interesting (or if you have something else you'd love to see explored) please let me know! I can't promise to fulfill all requests as, believe it or not, I do have a life, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this verse and what interests you about it. I'm having a lot of fun playing around in it!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tbh this chapter is not what I planned on writing when I started writing it, but I think it worked out? Anyway, recovery is not a straight line, and these four have been through a lot. Enjoy!

Juniper was acting weird.

He’d been acting weird since they met up with Yennefer, but it only got worse now that Geralt was there. When it had just been Juniper and Ciri, his old life would just show up in flashes—a flicker of yearning when he heard music, a glimmer of fear when he stood before a monster. Quick and ephemeral, buried before they had room to grow. He had been Juniper, steady and serious, dependable as a rock. But now it was like he was a whirling dancer, spinning back and forth between his old life and his oldest life, fast enough to make Ciri dizzy.

And it scared her. It was like watching a piece of cloth unravel, the threads of Juniper's two selves spooling away from each other until he was unrecognizable. One minute he was wild and bubbly, swinging Ciri up over his shoulders, braiding flowers into Geralt’s hair, trading quips with Yennefer over the kitchen table. And the next minute he caught himself, often halfway through a sentence, a laugh, a grin. Reeled himself in. Went back to making plans for their next move, sharpening his swords, coaxing Geralt to take his nerve potions, helping Yennefer gather herbs. Still helpful, still caring, but far more subdued. Practical. Casting aside those little bits of beauty that he brought into their lives.

She wasn’t the only one who noticed it. She’d seen Geralt run his hands over a half-finished braid, abandoned in favor of gathering feverfew, jaw clenched like he was trying to hold back a scream. She’d seen Yennefer glare down at her cooking when Juniper cut off their banter with a sharp “back to work, now.” She’d heard them murmuring sometimes while Yennefer tended to Geralt’s wounds, the word _Jaskier_ passing between them like a secret. They always cut themselves off when they noticed that Ciri was listening.

They tried to coax out Juniper’s human side. When he tried to pull his hands away from Geralt’s hair, Geralt would lean his head back and encourage him to keep going. Yennefer would throw out harmless barbs whenever she and Juniper were in the same room, trying to get him to rise to the bait. And sometimes he would give in to them, happily or not. But sometimes he would just grit his teeth and storm away, leaving the other inhabitants of the cottage feeling confused and wrong-footed.

It was weighing on them. But no one wanted to talk about it. Not Geralt, not Yennefer. Certainly not Juniper. And Ciri wouldn’t know where to begin.

It came to a head during one of Ciri’s lute lessons.

Juniper was in one of his lighter moods, as he showed her a new set of chord progressions, laughing and chattering as he guided her fingers on the strings. There was a knock on the parlor door and Yennefer slipped in, Geralt at her elbow. 

“Mind if we join you?” she asked. “We need some background noise.”

“Go ahead,” Ciri said, frowning as she mistimed a finger motion and made a sound that was less like music and more like a shrieking cat. Geralt winced.

“Perfect,” Yennefer said, smirking. “Keep doing that. We’re working on blocking out noise, so the more annoying it is, the better.”

“Don’t encourage bad habits, Yennefer,” said Juniper. “Cirilla, you’ve got a quarter rest between notes, move your fingers then.”

“Right.”

Yennefer pulled a jangling ball out of her dress and chucked it directly at Geralt’s head. He snatched it out of the air right before it hit his face.

“Give me some warning,” he said, though there was a smile in his voice. They’d been doing this for the past few weeks, and he’d missed nearly every catch at first. His frustration was agonizing to watch, twisting at Ciri’s gut as the ball hit him again and again. And then, slowly but surely, he started to figure out how to track it. How to trust his hearing and ignore his brain’s insistence that there was missing stimuli.

“You didn’t need it,” Yennefer replied. He tossed it back to her, a light underhanded throw.

Ciri strummed out the bit of music again, humming along, a light, hopeful melody.

“Composing something?” Juniper asked her.

“Maybe,” she said. “Trying to figure out a subject.”

“That’s always the hard part, with ballads,” he said. “Starting with the music is smart. It can help guide you with the lyrics. Figure out the tone of the story, if you don’t know what story you’re telling.”

Yennefer hurled the ball three feet to Geralt’s left and he jumped sideways to grab it. He whipped it back at her without a pause and she cursed as she fumbled it.

“What just happened?” she asked him, once she steadied it in her hands.

“Did it hit you?”

“Not quite. Caught it, then dropped it.”

“Hmm. That makes sense.”

“You heard the metal hitting my skin?”

“Yeah.”

Ciri hummed the next line in the song as her fingers danced over the lute. She frowned. There was something off about it.

“Play it again, just the lute part,” Juniper said.

He hummed along with her music, copying her melody, but moving the highest note up a half step. That was it. That was the off-ness.

“See, now it goes with the chords you’re playing,” he said with a satisfied grin.

Silence. Geralt was clutching the ball to his chest with a grip so tight it must have hurt. Yennefer was staring at Juniper unabashedly.

“What?” Juniper asked. The lightness was gone, steel slipping into his voice.

“I haven’t heard you sing since we’ve been here,” Geralt said.

“I wasn’t singing. I was humming. For my student.”

He turned back to Ciri with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Try playing that,” he said.

“You should. Sing, I mean. I miss it,” said Geralt. Juniper closed his eyes. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“I don’t sing anymore,” he said.

“Why not?” Yennefer asked. “Silence doesn’t suit you.”

“It suits me just fine.”

He got to his feet.

“Lesson’s over for today, I think.”

“Jaskier—” Geralt said.

“That isn’t my name.” His breath was coming fast and harsh as he stalked to the door.

“I’m sorry—”

“I thought you’d be happy to get rid of my singing,” Juniper snapped.

“I’m not,” Geralt said. “I’m not. It’s part of you, and you miss it too. I can tell.”

Juniper’s shoulders slumped, and for a moment, Ciri thought he’d relent. That he’d come back to the couch and sit down, and that the four of them could talk about this unspoken gulf that had ripped him in half.

“It’s not part of me,” he said instead. “It’s part of a man who stole my life for twenty years. And he’s dead.”

He hurled the words like a bomb and something broke in Geralt’s face. He blinked rapidly, running his fingers over the surface of the ball as he tried to formulate a response. Before he could say anything, Juniper turned and stormed out of the room.

“Jask—Juniper, wait,” he said, starting forward at the sound of footsteps.

“Let him go,” Yennefer murmured, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Let him calm down.”

 _Let him calm down_ so they could just pretend this conversation didn’t happen. _Let him calm down_ so they could just keep dancing around Juniper like he was made of glass, like he could shatter into his different selves and be broken forever. _Let him calm down_ so they could keep living in this uneasy equilibrium that just made them all miserable.

No.

She snatched up the lute, slung it over her back, and darted out after him.

She found him out in the garden, ripping up a patch of rosemary like it had personally offended him. Like if he pulled at it hard enough, it could tear out all the parts of himself that he didn’t like. He spun around as she approached, mouth already open to deliver a no-doubt scathing remark, before he realized it was her.

“Wanna give me a hand?” he asked, turning back to the rosemary.

“You miss music,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

He paused, dirty fingers twitching in the air.

“I don’t,” he said.

“You do,” she said. “You look at every bard we meet like they’re married to the woman of your dreams.”

“With anger, you mean? Because most of the bards we meet are frankly dreadful singers, and—”

“With jealousy,” she corrected, because she wasn’t letting him talk around this anymore.

“I’m not jealous,” he said. “That part of my life is over. I don’t want it back.”

“Yes you do,” she said. “You just think you can’t have it, so you’ve convinced yourself you don’t want it anyway.”

He swallowed. Plucked out a hunk of rosemary with a particularly vicious twist of the wrist. Yennefer would not be happy when she saw the destruction that he had wrought on her herb garden.

“You don’t need to lock away that part of your life,” she said. “You’re not human. And you won’t ever be human again. But the person you were then—that’s a part of you. You’re soft. And silly. And witty. And _musical.”_

“I’m not though. Jaskier was—”

“And _you are_ Jaskier.”

She knelt down next to him.

“You braided my hair when I was scared. You had a kind word for every person we saved, no matter how much they hated you. You gave me the gift of music, taught me how to control my chaos. And now you’re suppressing all of that, convincing yourself that all those emotions are the afterimages of another person’s life, because you think it’s something you can’t have.”

She pulled the lute off her back and held it out to him.

“But you can have it. All of it.”

“I—I’m a witcher. I can’t—we’re not silly. Or soft. And we don’t sing.”

“You’re a person,” she said. “You’re a person, just like Geralt. And people can do whatever they want.”

She kept holding the lute, unwavering.

He dusted his dirty hands off on his pants and took the lute like he was scared he would break it.

“I can’t play though,” he said, cradling it in his arms. “My fingers.”

“We both know there are plenty of chords with only three notes.”

He brought his hands up to the strings.

“Play me a ballad,” she said, sitting cross-legged in the dirt. “One I’ve never heard before. Show me how it’s done.”

He cleared his throat.

“I do have one. It’s been in my head for a while, but I’ve never actually played it.”

And then, slowly, carefully, like a child learning to walk, he started to pluck out a series of notes. Clear and dark, like rain falling in the dead of night. Faster and faster, a gathering storm. And then—

_“The fairer sex, they often call it.”_

He started to sing.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! Sorry for the longer wait on this chapter, spring break ended and I have ~homework~ now (though no more lectures because my school is online now). I won't be able to maintain the every day update schedule, but I'm hoping to update at least a few times a week. 
> 
> CW for this chapter: This chapter deals with internalized homophobia. This will be a theme (though not quite as strong) for the next few chapters. Sometimes you write about worlds where prejudice doesn't exist, and sometimes you write about characters dealing with and overcoming prejudice, and I chose to take the latter approach for this fic.

A sick feeling started to bloom in Ciri’s stomach as Juniper sang. _When did you write this?_ she wanted to ask. _Who did you write this for?_ Because there were three people in the ballad, orbiting each other in a painful dance. The singer. A woman, one who could destroy with a kiss. And the singer’s love. “You.”

Who was “you?”

She puzzled it over in her mind as she applauded, as she leaned forward and swept Juniper into a hug.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, pulling back.

And it was beautiful. Powerful. She had found herself caught up in Juniper’s torment as he sang of his love, pulled away from him by the current of another. But it was also confusing. Shouldn’t it be “his sweet kiss?” If Juniper was singing about his love, and she was pulled away by another man?

Unless.

Unless the woman the singer loved was caught in the current of another woman.

And that—

That wasn’t—

“Thank you,” said Juniper, snapping her out of her thoughts. He was out of breath, face flushed with excitement, holding his lute to his chest like it was a child. “And _thank you._ I—you were right. I missed it.”

“You don’t have to miss it anymore,” Ciri said, getting to her feet. “Come back inside?”

A flash of fear flickered over Juniper’s face.

“You need to talk to Geralt and Yennefer eventually.”

“I know,” he sighed, plucking a bit of rosemary idly. “But perhaps if I put it off—”

“You’ll just make them more upset.”

He stood like a man about to walk to his execution.

“Can you wait out here?” he asked, handing her the lute. “This conversation might get…loud. Keep practicing.”

She wanted to protest, but they all had griefs that they needed to air, emotions that needed to be felt and screamed and known. And if she was there they would censor themselves, keep their feelings bottled up in their chests. Stewing and churning until there was another explosion, another fight.

Gods it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that they were all so upset that she couldn’t be near them. It wasn’t fair that Juniper didn’t know who he was, and it wasn’t fair that Yennefer had lost control of herself, and it wasn’t fair that Geralt had been starved and tortured and blinded. And it wasn’t fair that they were all still hurting after everything, that they were digging fingers into each other’s wounds. _We deserve some fucking happiness,_ Juniper had said, that first night. And they did. They all did. But the world was turning happiness into a battle instead of a benediction.

“Okay,” she said, and she couldn’t keep the shivering rage out of her voice. Juniper smiled and reached out, ghosting a thumb over her jawline. His eyes were wet.

“Thank you,” he said. “We’ll be okay. Don’t worry about us.”

How could she not worry? How could she not worry about these people that had given so much, had lost so much, had protected her despite everything that had been done to them? How could she not worry about her family?

She just nodded. Another concession.

He let go of her face and walked back towards the house, each step slow and deliberate. She stared down at the lute in her arms, swallowing around the lump in her throat. Juniper’s ballad rose in her mind.

_The story is this, she’ll destroy with her sweet kiss—_

Why _she?_

And she remembered her twelfth birthday feast, two years ago. She remembered the lights and the laughter and the dancing and—

The Count’s daughter, grinning bright and sharp as flute-song, holding out a hand in invitation.

_Dance with me._

Harmless fun, except—

Her smile had flipped Ciri’s stomach over and it didn’t mean everything, except—

Her eyes had been so very blue, and Ciri couldn’t stop staring at them, and that was just jealousy, wasn’t it? Except—

Her laugh had been sweeter than any song the musicians played that night.

They’d danced one dance, whirling across the ballroom floor with the other children, and she had felt unstoppable, invincible, like someone had reached inside her heart and given it wings. Like she was finally where she was supposed to be. The song had ended with a flourish and they’d jolted to a stop, grinning wildly, and Ciri’s heart had slammed double-time into her ribs, beating its newfound wings against the inside of her chest like it was trying to break free.

 _Another dance?_ the girl had asked

And Ciri had known then. She’d known that if she said yes to this dance, she’d never want to stop dancing. Never want to stop looking at those eyes, hearing that laugh. The bird in her chest had frozen, pinned in place by a crushing wave of ice. She’d grabbed it by the wings and pulled, hard, pulled out the feathers and the fancy by the fistful. 

She’d shaken her head, babbled some excuse, and returned to her table on trembling legs. _What is wrong with you? Why are you staring at another girl like that? Why do you want to dance with her? What is this, what is this, what is this? Are you some kind of freak?_

She’d sat in her throne and for the rest of the night, she’d kept her eyes off of the Count’s daughter. Off of all of the daughters. And she’d danced with some of the sons and that had been—that had been nice. Safe. Expected.

_This is fine._

_This is who I’m supposed to be._

She’d told herself that it was a fluke. A fleeting crush, a passing fancy. That she'd merely admired the girl’s dress, her hair, her skill at dancing. But she never accepted another dance from a girl, after that. She was growing into a lady, and it wasn’t proper for two ladies to dance. It looked silly. Childish.

_But you felt so free._

She hadn’t looked at lord’s daughters, count’s daughters, servant’s daughters for longer than was necessary. Hadn’t let herself fall into friendships with girls _(though she wanted to, oh she wanted to)._ She’d joined a pack of boys in the marketplace instead and that had been warm and safe and comfortable (until it wasn’t).

And she’d forced the memory of the Count’s daughter and her musical laughter out of her head.

But Juniper’s song had reached inside her chest and _yanked,_ reminding her heart that it had once had wings. And now it was beating harder in her chest, wounded and confused. _Why did you tear me in half?_ it asked her. _What did I do wrong?_

And what _had_ she done wrong? What had she done wrong to deserve this?

She sniffled, strummed her fingers over the lute. Sing about something else. Something happy. Think about something else. Put your heart back in its place.

She closed her eyes and sang a ballad that Juniper had taught her, about a vampire that had fallen in love with a witch. It was silly and simple, four chords repeated over and over. Easy for her to get swept up in, pulling her away from her melancholy. It was nothing. And if it was something, it was something she could bury. As she sang, she focused her chaos on the ruined rosemary patch. Poked and prodded at it, encouraged it to grow back healthier than before. Reduce some of Yennefer’s ire.

She finished the ballad and opened her eyes. Her stomach dropped. _No._

Something had grown in Yennefer’s garden, but it wasn’t rosemary. It was a bushel of forget-me-nots, growing wherever there was room, smothering the herbs in bright blue petals. The same blue as the girl’s eyes.

Nausea rose in her stomach, sharp and sudden, and she swallowed back bile as she brought her fingers back up to the lute. She couldn’t leave these flowers here. They were weeds. They’d suffocate the other plants, and then Yennefer wouldn’t have the ingredients she needed for her potions.

She thought of the way she’d let the girl go, thought of her face falling as Ciri refused her dance. Hummed out another song that Juniper had taught her. Another love song, this one with a tragic ending. A werewolf and a siren, doomed to forever be apart because one was of the air and the sea, and the other one was of the earth. They had no place to build a home. But every full moon, the siren would fly above the werewolf’s forest and sing and sing to ease her love’s pain.

That was the reality of the world, Ciri thought. You might love something hard enough to give your heart wings, but reality wouldn’t bend just because you wished it, sang it, loved it. Most loves would never be.

“And the wolf fell asleep to a song,” she finished.

Around her, the forget-me-nots withered into nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone give Ciri a hug.
> 
> This fic was supposed to be over two chapters after the "Geralt rescue scene" but then I had to go and give the characters realistic responses to trauma that they now need to work through. Whoops.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chapter yet or a barrage of unnecessary italics? You decide!

Juniper seemed to breathe a little easier after their talk. He wasn’t so quick to shove down the reminders of his humanity, giving his affection more and more freely. Telling stories and comforting and laughing, bright bursts of laughter that warmed their cottage from the inside out. And, not every day, but more and more frequently, singing. Little ditties as he washed the dishes and brushed down the horses, snatches of ballads and folk songs and tuneless bits of narration.

One night, about a week after the incident in the herb garden, they were gathered in the living room again. Yennefer had spread out a selection of potion ingredients and was talking Ciri through their properties—which could create a healing balm, which a love potion, which a deadly poison. Ciri listened to her eagerly, drinking in all the knowledge she could get. She was going to be the strongest mage the world had ever seen, and that meant learning every scrap of information she could. She would be unbeatable. Unstoppable. And then she would go to Nilfgaard and make them pay for everything they’d done.

Geralt, screaming.

Geralt, half-dead in a cell.

Geralt, _blind_ and _hurt_ and thinking that no one was coming for him and—

“Ciri.” A finger snapped in front of her face. “I know this is a lot to absorb, but try and focus, okay?”

“Right. Sorry, Yennefer.”

She glanced up. Geralt, right in front of her. Cross-legged on the floor as Juniper braided his hair. Alive. Cuts and bruises faded from his skin, nerves no longer sparking with pain. He was still too thin, even after a month in their care, but he was regaining weight. Muscle, even, from the training that he, Yennefer, and Juniper had started. He would be okay.

Except for the potion burns, forever branded into his face.

Except for his ruined eyes.

She took a deep breath, ducking her head back down to the herbs. It still boiled inside her, the knowledge that she had let this happen to him. _Needless guilt is the enemy of happiness,_ Yennefer had said, and maybe she was right. But Ciri didn’t think her guilt was all that needless.

“This is feverfew. Even humans with no magic can use this one.”

It looked like a daisy, a bright white flower with a yellow middle. Yennefer picked up one of the flowers, twirling it between her fingers.

“The important compounds lie in the leaves,” she said, breaking one off and handing it to Ciri. Ciri took it with numb fingers, trying to banish the guilt clawing its way up her throat. Because she had left Geralt to be captured, she’d been too scared to tell Juniper who she was—they could have saved Geralt three months earlier if she wasn’t such a coward, she couldn’t get the forget-me-nots out of her head when that was the last thing she should be thinking about right now—

“Cirilla.”

_Gods, you can’t even get this right._

“Feverfew, right. Got it.”

Yennefer frowned. Reached forward and took the leaf out of her hand.

“I think we’ve covered enough today,” she murmured. Gentle. So gentle. Ciri didn’t deserve gentleness, she needed to be good, she needed to be better, she needed to get this _right._

“No, I’m fine. Tell me what it does.”

“Tomorrow, little bird. I’m tired.”

She wasn’t _tired,_ she just thought Ciri was. And she wasn’t. She could keep going. But before she could protest, Juniper waved her over.

“Come sit over here,” he called, tying off the end of Geralt’s hair. “I can make you two match.”

She swallowed and crossed the room on leaden legs. In moments like this, when her guilt felt like an all-encompassing wave, she wondered how Geralt could even stand to be near her. Knowing that this was all her fault, knowing that he’d still be able to see if he had never found her in the woods.

“Yennefer’s a merciless teacher,” Geralt said, scooching over so that she could sit in front of Juniper. “Don’t worry, you’ll get it eventually.”

“This ‘merciless teacher’ is the reason you’re not still tripping over furniture,” Yennefer shot back as she flopped onto the couch next to Juniper.

“Hmm.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You know with your hair, you two really do look like you could be related,” Juniper said. He gathered her hair into bunches, carefully smoothing it out. Gentle, gentle, _gentle,_ and it hurt more than if he’d grabbed her hair and yanked it. She swallowed back a wave of tears, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the floor.

Juniper started to hum under his breath as he worked. _Toss a coin to your witcher, oh valley of plenty, oh valley—_

“That song seems a bit self-serving now, huh?” Yennefer muttered.

“A bit,” Juniper laughed. “But I’m not singing it for me. I’m singing it for our two white wolves.”

And how _could_ he compare her to Geralt? When he had done so much and given so much, and Ciri had just taken and taken and _taken._

Next to her, Geralt went still. She flicked her eyes to the side, trying to catch the look on his face. And he—he looked _happy._ A small smile spreading slowly across his lips. The tension drained out of him as he leaned back against the sofa.

“I heard that song a lot in my travels,” he murmured. “None of the other bards could get it quite right.”

Juniper’s hands paused for a moment in her hair before continuing, a bit shakier.

“None of the other bards have my range,” he said. “They probably made the high notes sound like a shrieking cat.”

“True.”

And it was—warm _._ Cozy. They were together, and Geralt was smiling, and Juniper was making them look alike, and it wasn’t _right,_ it wasn’t—

“How can you _stand me?”_

She jerked her head forward, wincing as a few strands of hair caught in Juniper’s fingers, and scrambled to her feet. Spun to face them, shoulders heaving, tears finally winning the battle against her resolve. Juniper stared at her, shocked, hands still raised in the air. The smile had vanished from Geralt’s face. Yennefer sat up, pulling her feet out of Juniper’s lap.

“Cirilla—” she began.

“Don’t. _Don’t.”_

Geralt got to his feet, stepping forward, and his eyes were concerned and loving and _empty, empty, empty,_ and it was all her fault, it was all—

“I’m sorry,” she gasped.

“What are you apologizing for?” Geralt asked, tilting his head, brows furrowed in confusion.

“I—I—”

She couldn’t take this anymore, couldn’t take him standing there and acting like she’d done nothing wrong. She spun on her heel and sprinted from the room, ignoring the shouts of _wait_ and _stop_ from behind her. Just like she had run in the forest, cowardly and sobbing out her heart as she fled. She ran for the front door of the cottage and flung it open, dashing out past Yennefer’s garden and into the woods. Lungs gasping and legs pounding. Move. Move. Move. Get _away._

She made it about half a mile into the woods before she collapsed, curling up in the shadow of a tall pine tree. Hiding her face in her knees, and she must look like Geralt had, tucked away in a cell and left to die. She muffled a sob against the fabric of her dress. Because gods, there were so many cruel people in this world, so many monsters, why did that have to happen to _him?_ And why did it have to be her fault?

She tightened her grip on her knees, trying to get the images out of her head—the real Geralt, injured and terrified in a dingy dungeon, interspersed with all the nightmares she had dreamt up. Burned and hanged and whipped and—

And blinded.

She had dreamt it, she had _known_ it, and she still hadn’t gone looking for him.

Don’t scream. Don’t scream. There might be hunters in these woods. Innocent people that didn’t deserve to die just because she was a monumental failure. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Rustling leaves. She curled up tighter, buried her face further into her knees. There was someone approaching her. A Nilfgaardian knight? Yennefer? Juniper? She didn’t know what she dreaded more.

“Ciri?”

Her breath froze in her throat. How had he—?

She lifted her head up. Geralt was standing in front of her. His sword was sheathed at his side, but he wasn’t wearing armor, hadn’t even bothered to put on shoes. He’d just charged into the woods after her and—and _found_ her, somehow.

“How did you find me?” she asked, voice a broken whisper. His face crumpled, and he dropped to his knees in front of her, grabbing her and pulling her into a crushing hug. And he shouldn’t—she shouldn’t be allowed to touch him, not when she had—

“Heard you crying,” he murmured, rocking her back and forth. She reached her arms up—she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t, but she wanted to—and wrapped them around his shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he said as she sobbed against his chest. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s _not.”_

“Why?”

“You—I—” She sniffled. Took a deep breath, trying to pull together all the courage that she’d left aside so many times. Because it looked like she needed to tell him how much she’d failed him.

“I left you,” she said. “In the clearing. I _left you,_ and I never tried to find you, I just let Nilfgaard hurt you _—”_

“Breathe. _Breathe._ It wasn’t your fault,” he said. He sounded absolutely horrified. “Have you thought it was this whole time?”

“How can you _say that?”_ she shrieked. “They took you because of _me,_ they tortured you because of _me,_ they _blinded you, and it’s all my fault.”_

“Did you make me drink fireblood?”

“No, but—”

“Did you pour a potion in my eyes?”

 _“No,_ _but—”_

“Then I don’t understand how—”

“BECAUSE I SAW IT.”

Silence. The squawking of birds around them, startled from their perches by Ciri’s scream.

“You saw—?”

“My dreams.”

Geralt’s fingers scrunched tighter into her dress. His breathing got unsteady, and surely he must understand now. Surely he must hate her now. Surely any second he would shove her away, demand that she leave, and she would deserve it.

“You saw them hurting me?” Horror drenched every syllable, like her seeing the torture was worse than the torture itself.

“I—not exactly, but—I saw the clearing. Playing out differently, over and over again, and I thought they were just dreams, but—but I saw them burn you alive. And I saw them cut out your eyes. And I think—I think some part of that was a vision.”

His breath caught in his throat.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “You shouldn’t have had to see that.”

“Don’t be sorry. _I’m—_ You asked me to help you,” she sobbed. “In the dreams. You _begged me_ to help you, and I didn’t.”

“You did, though.” He moved a hand from her back to her head, stroking over the half-finished braid. “You saved me. If you hadn’t come, I would still be in that cell. If I wasn’t dead.”

“But I could’ve—if I had just told Juniper who I was—”

“You did the smart thing,” he said. “You had no way of knowing that he and I knew each other. You had no way of knowing that your dreams were real. You did _everything_ you could have done, and as soon as you knew I was alive, you came for me. You were so brave, and I am so proud of you.”

It was the most she’d ever heard him say and it seemed to take something out of him, that speech. He went back to rocking her, quiet and steady. And he wasn’t leaving. Even after everything, he was refusing to budge. Refusing to admit how wrong she was.

There was one more thing that might persuade him.

“You shouldn’t be proud of me. I’m a freak,” she snarled.

“Is this about your chaos?” he asked. “Because you shouldn’t be ashamed of—”

 _“No._ There was this girl, in Cintra. And I danced with her, and I think I fell in love with her, a little bit.”

There was a long pause. Geralt took a deep breath, hands tightening around Ciri, and now he must know, now he must see, now—

“Who taught you that that was wrong?” he said, voice filled with quiet rage.

“No one,” she said. “But I mean. No one feels like that. No girls fall in love with girls.”

He made a noise halfway between a snarl and a sob.

“You’ve spent your life in a palace,” he said, almost to himself. “Of course you haven’t—”

“Haven’t what?”

“Plenty of girls fall in love with girls.”

She shook her head against his chest.

“No. No. You’re just saying that because you don’t want to admit that I’m—”

“It’s true. I’ve known dozens of people like you, you’re not—you’re not a freak. You’re not broken. There is nothing wrong with you.”

“There is _everything_ wrong with me.”

She wiggled out of his grip and leaned back against the tree, breathing hard.

“I left you,” she whispered. “I left you, and you got hurt, and I didn’t come for you, and my heart is all wrong, and I’ve done _everything wrong.”_

“Do you want me to hate you?” Geralt asked, sitting back on his heels. All the strength had drained out of him and he looked—he looked a little bit hopeless.

“I—maybe I do.”

“Why?”

She bit her lip, turning her head to the side. She didn’t want to look at him, she didn’t want to see the reminder of everything she’d ruined.

“Because then maybe I’ll hate myself a little less.”

He inhaled, short and sharp, like someone had struck him.

“I am never going to hate you,” he said. “And I am never going to blame you for something that _isn’t your fault._ Because nothing that you just said _was_ your fault. You left because you had to. You didn’t hurt me, Nilfgaard did. You didn’t come for me because you thought I was dead. And you can’t choose where your heart leads you.”

He made it all sound so simple, so cause-and-effect. But she couldn’t let herself believe him. Her emotions were so tangled, twisting over themselves in great heaps of brambles and thorns, stabbing into her skin and her heart. She could spend a lifetime sorting through it all, and she still didn’t think she’d come out of it completely guiltless.

“I want you to talk to someone about this,” he said. “Regularly. Try and sort it out. It doesn’t have to be me. It can be Yen or Juniper or some combination of us. It’ll be hard, but—but you don’t deserve to carry this guilt. It’s not yours to carry.”

“I—”

“Please. Think of it as your penance, if you must.”

She swallowed.

“Okay. And—and I’ll try not to love—not to love another girl. I promise, you don’t have to pretend it’s normal. I can control it, it’s just like controlling my chaos, it’s—”

“You don’t have to kill your heart." He sounded like he was mourning something. "It _is_ normal, Ciri, I promise.”

“It’s not—” Her heart was racing in her ears. Because she couldn’t let herself love, only to discover that Geralt had been lying all along, that he really did think of her as a freak. It would break her.

“What would you say if it was me?”

“What are you talking about?”

He took a deep breath. His fingers curled into fists. When he spoke again, it was unsure, unsteady. Like he was holding out his heart, fragile and ready for her to dash against the floor.

“I—I’ve been in love with Juniper for years.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay healthy, wash your hands for at least 20 seconds, and STAY THE FUCK INSIDE
> 
> My state is slowly shutting down everything so y'all will probably be getting more updates as I write away the creeping dread. Yayyyyyyy


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! Hope everyone is doing alright out there and staying at least somewhat sane in isolation/quarantine/etc. And if not, hopefully this can brighten up your day a bit :)

He was in love with—

That wasn’t—

 _Geralt?_ In love with another man? Was that even possible?

“What?” she whispered, because what else was she supposed to say? Geralt sighed, crossed his arms over his chest.

“I told you the story of the djinn,” he said. She nodded, then caught herself. A spark of self-loathing slipped down her throat. He had lost his sight because of her, and she couldn’t even remember to speak her thoughts.

“Yes,” she said, holding back her frustration.

It had been one of the first post-nightmare stories that he had ever told her, and she had been entranced. It was like a fairytale—a singer losing his voice to a poorly-worded wish, a desperate ride through the forest to seek out the witch who could restore it. Less exciting now though, now that she knew Juniper. The thought of him drowning in his own blood had her holding back a shudder. He could have died then, died before she ever met him.

“Juniper, he—he almost died. My wish almost killed him. Before that, I didn’t know how much he meant to me. But I—it was the most terrified I had ever been.”

She knew what he meant. She hadn’t known real fear until she’d seen her grandmother lying in front of her, covered in blood and gasping for air. The fear that someone you loved was dying, was going to be _gone,_ forever, and there was nothing you could do about it.

“I didn’t know why I was so scared. Didn’t have time to think, really, just had to get Juniper to safety.”

“And you did,” Ciri reminded him.

“And I did,” he said with a small smile. “But afterwards, Yennefer asked Juniper if he wanted her to remove his curse. As a favor. And an apology for—never mind. She sensed a dark aura around him, figured it was probably a spell. But he didn’t know what she was talking about.”

“The twenty-year undoing,” Ciri murmured.

“Yeah. Yen ran some diagnostic magic, figured out what the curse was—couldn’t tell him what had been undone, just that something had.”

He took a shuddering breath.

“It wasn’t…good,” he said. And yeah. It couldn’t have been. She imagined being Juniper, in that moment. Imagined a sorceress telling her that she was going to lose something very important to her, at some nebulous point in the future.

“He was worried about losing a lot of things,” Geralt said. “Just kept coming up with different scenarios, different ways his life could fall apart. But one thing he kept coming back to was the idea of losing me.”

He swallowed, drew his arms tighter around himself. Ciri just wanted to fly forward, to get him to wrap his arms around her instead. To provide _some_ sort of comfort, small and insignificant as it might be.

“He put me at the same level as his voice. Which is— _was_ his entire livelihood, his entire life, and he was just as worried about me dying as he was about losing it. That’s how much he cared about me. That’s when I realized I loved him.”

And he sounded—genuine. Sweet and warm. A bit sad. _In love._ Like Eist had always gotten, when he talked about her grandmother. _I realized I loved him,_ as natural as breathing. _I realized I loved him,_ and there was no shame in it.

“I didn’t think that kind of love was possible," she said.

He smiled at her, reached out an arm. She scooted forward and let him cradle her against his chest.

“Nobility hurts people in many ways,” he said, his chest rumbling against her shoulder. “So many monsters I’ve fought were born from noble families. The constant struggle for power, the endless choices between two evils, lovers broken apart in favor of political marriages, it—changes people.”

“And you think it changed me?”

“I think it kept you sheltered. I think it kept you ignorant.”

There was a burst of hurt beneath her ribs and she flinched against him.

“No, not like—” he sighed. “It isn’t your fault. It’s not a judgment against you. It’s a judgment against the world that shaped you.”

“My grandmother.”

“Her, yes. But also the customs that have reigned in the Cintran court for decades. If not centuries.”

“Cintra hurt people,” Ciri murmured. Because she had realized that, in her months of running and hiding. Realized that when she had met Dara, when he had been so, so _scared_ of her discovering that he was an elf.

“They did,” Geralt said.

“My grandmother hurt people.”

“She did.”

“She hurt _me._ By not telling me about this, by—”

The constant talk of her future marriage. The subtle nudging towards young lordlings. Never telling her about the power she carried. Never telling her about what the ‘Great Cleansing’ really was. Letting her grow up with such a blurry picture of the world around her.

“…yes.”

“I should hate her,” she said. And there were the tears again, gathering hot and wet in her eyes. Gods, when would she be able to stop crying all the time? “I should _hate_ her, Geralt. So why am I so…why am I…”

He tightened his grip and let her gather her thoughts together, shaky and fragmented.

“Why am I still so upset that she’s gone?” she managed to say at last. “When she hurt me? When she hurt everyone?”

He dropped his lips to the crown of her head. When he spoke, it was quiet, muffled by the strands of her hair.

“Sometimes you can know something to be true with every bit of your brain, and your emotions won’t want to listen to you,” he said. “People can tell you something over and over. You can tell _yourself_ something over and over. But sometimes your heart doesn’t listen to words. It believes what it wants. And that can be difficult, when it’s believing something that’s hurting you.”

She remembered Geralt and Juniper’s quiet conversation that first night, when Geralt had learned that he’d be blind forever.

_I think I’m broken._

_No, you’re not._

She swallowed back another wave of sobs. Hid her face against his chest. Because gods, he had been through so much and was still hurting so much, and here he was comforting _her._

“It took me a long time to even admit that I had emotions at all,” Geralt continued. “Much less realize that some of them were hurting me. That I needed to think about them, talk about them, if I wanted to feel any better. It’s still difficult. I don’t have the words for it, most of the time.”

She didn’t either. Couldn’t explain the twisting ball of guilt and fear and furious longing for everything to get _better._

“But I’m trying,” Geralt finished. He pressed a kiss to her head and drew back, letting her see the tired smile that had bloomed over his face. “Sometimes that’s all we can do.”

“Do you—do you feel better? At all?”

Would she ever be okay with herself?

“I’ve been talking to Yen and Juniper a lot this past week,” he said. “Ever since you three got me out, really, but especially since Juniper’s—um—”

“Breakdown?”

He snorted.

“Yeah. We’ve been making time for each other. And it hasn’t fixed everything, but it’s getting easier. I think we’re all coming to terms with who we are. How we’ve changed. What we’ve lost. That’s why I want you to talk to someone. I should have thought of it earlier—”

“No." Because gods he was pulling himself together after being _tortured_ for four months. None of her problems could compare to that. "No, you shouldn’t have to worry about—”

“You’re my child. It is my job to worry about you.”

And she had called him her father. Yennefer and Juniper had called her his daughter. But he had never—

“You’re claiming me?”

“Of course I am.”

“But I thought—I thought you hated this whole destiny, law-of-surprise…thing, I thought you—”

“Destiny can, as always, go fuck itself. You’re not my child because some higher power commanded it. You’re my child because I chose to come back for you. Because I chose to make you mine.” He hesitated. “If that’s what you want. I know that you lost your family. I would not presume to replace them.”

“I…when I introduced myself to Yennefer, I told her that my name was Cirilla of Rivia. I told her that you were my father. If you chose me, I’m choosing you right back.”

He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob and pulled her in for one last hug.

“You’ll get through this,” he told her. “I know it feels scary right now, but you’ll get through this. We’ll get through this.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

He got to his feet, helping her up with him.

“We should head back,” he said. He hesitated for a moment, then shook his head with an exasperated huff of air. When he spoke again, it sounded a bit like someone was pulling his teeth out.

Bad thought. Bad dream. Don’t dwell on that comparison.

“I was very focused on finding you,” he said. “And when I focus on something for a while my senses get a bit—muddled. Overwhelmed. Could you…could you lead me?”

He was asking for her help.

He trusted her. After everything.

“Sure,” she said, trying to keep her voice light and easy. Like it was no big deal.

He looped a hand around her elbow and together they started making their way back through the woods. They stayed quiet, like they had on so many of their journeys, just drinking in the sound of the birds around them, the leaves rustling in the wind. Ciri only spoke to warn him of a log in their way, a dip in the ground.

The silence gave her time to think. Geralt was in love with Juniper. She hadn’t fully processed that when he’d said it, focused ( _selfishly, you selfish little—_ stop) on what it meant for herself. On the fact that he was in love with another man, not on the fact that he was in love with _Juniper,_ specifically. And it was—it was nice to think about. Juniper had said it himself, they deserved some happiness. And they made each other happy, Ciri could tell. Could tell from the way Geralt smiled at Juniper when he sang, from the way that Juniper had filled Geralt’s room with the sweetest smelling flowers when he was still bedridden. From the way that they refused to give up on each other.

But did Juniper feel the same way? After all, there was the mystery woman of his ballad…to…consider…

_The curse broke after the dragon hunt. I’d already lost my best friend._

_I do have one ballad. It’s been in my head for a while, but I’ve never actually played it._

Oh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh it is. So difficult. To make Geralt talk about his feelings and not come across as OOC. Not convinced I pulled it off, but I hope ya liked it anyway!
> 
> Also, there's a new chapter of my daemon AU up (this one from Jaskier's POV) so if you want more angst, comfort, and identity freakouts, go check it out!


	20. Chapter 20

The revelation flashed into her head like a bolt of lightning. Juniper was in love with Geralt. The ballad had been about _Geralt._ That thought kept singing in her head, repeating over and over as they walked through the forest, as they slipped into their yard, as the back door of the cottage opened and Juniper came flying out, Yennefer quick on his heels.

“Oh thank the gods, you’re alright,” Juniper gasped, bending down and sweeping Ciri into a hug. “Don’t _ever_ run off like that again, okay? You had us all worried sick.”

“But…”

“I know you wanted some time alone. But next time you’re upset, go out into the stables and pet the horses. Sulk in your room. Play some music in the gardens. But _please_ don’t run into the woods without telling us first, alright?”

“Alright,” Ciri mumbled against his chest. Another pang of guilt. She didn’t want them to worry about her, she didn’t want to hurt them anymore. She just wanted them all to be happy, and they couldn’t all be happy without her feeling miserable, without her misery scaring them.

“Nice work finding her,” Yennefer said to Geralt, nudging him on the shoulder. “Maybe we should play hide-and-seek more often. Let you practice your tracking. What do you think, little bird?”

“Don’t encourage her,” grumbled Juniper, getting to his feet. Though a smile did flash across his face as he looked at Geralt.

_Because he was in love with him._

Geralt unbuckled the sword from his belt and handed it over to Juniper. Right. Because it wasn’t Geralt’s sword. Nilfgaard had stripped Geralt of everything he’d owned. There was probably some soldier in their army fighting with a silver sword, the blade long since dulled and tarnished from poor maintenance. The thought made something in Ciri’s chest roar with indignation.

“Perhaps we could play a more organized game,” Geralt said. “Later.”

Juniper frowned. He took the sword and flicked his eyes over Geralt, lingering on his face and shoulders. Ciri followed his gaze and noticed, for the first time, the tightness in Geralt’s jaw, the rigidity to his posture. Like he was holding in a scream.

 _Overwhelmed,_ he had said, and she had thought he just meant that he couldn’t focus quite as well as normal. Hadn’t thought much more of it. Had focused more on the fact that he was trusting her to lead him. Stupid. Short-sighted.

“How bad is it?” Juniper asked.

“Two,” Geralt said, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Juniper snorted.

“How bad is it?” he asked again. And this had happened before, hadn’t? Was routine even, routine enough for them to have a scale by which to judge Geralt’s pain. And she hadn’t noticed.

“…six.”

“Six. Okay. We can work with that. Take my arm?”

Geralt didn’t move to grab Juniper’s elbow, just stayed swaying back and forth. His face was growing paler by the second. When he spoke, it was with a raspy half-croak.

“Um. I don’t know where—”

“Fuck.”

Juniper slipped forward and took Geralt’s hand, guiding it to his right elbow.

“You are _not_ at a six if you can’t track me,” he admonished. His voice had dropped to a near whisper. And how much had her unrestrained sob-screaming hurt Geralt’s ears, if normal speech couldn’t be tolerated? She swallowed around the lump in her throat. Why couldn’t she just _pay attention?_

“Let’s get you into a bath,” Juniper said, tugging Geralt back towards the house. “Muffle everything a bit, does that sound good?”

Geralt nodded sluggishly, dragging his feet as he followed. He looked two inches away from collapsing to the ground. Juniper turned his head over his shoulder as they walked, and there was a hint of franticness in his eyes as he sought out Yennefer.

“Yen, can you—?”

“Of course.”

Her hand ghosted over Ciri’s shoulder, squeezing down lightly.

“Come. The marigolds need tending to.”

She steered Ciri over to a small patch of orange flowers and pulled a length of cloth from her pocket.

“What potion do we use these for?” she asked, and she was trying to distract Ciri, wasn’t she? Trying to keep her mind off the fact that Geralt was shivering out of his skin, that he was blind and confused, that his senses were flying every which way.

“The bombs,” Ciri said. _Please,_ she begged her brain. _Let me be distracted._

“The bombs,” confirmed Yennefer. “I’d like to make around twenty potions which means we need…?”

“Um.” She racked her brain. How many flowers per potion again?

“Sixty flowers,” Yennefer finished, when it became obvious that Ciri didn’t know the answer.

“Got it.” _Three flowers per potion. Three flowers per potion. Don’t forget it this time._

They worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes, plucking the flowers and bundling them in Yennefer’s cloth. And then Yennefer paused at the end of a row.

“Geralt doesn’t like us to see when he’s in pain,” she said. Ciri didn’t answer, just kept yanking up the marigolds. She was going to try and say it wasn’t Ciri’s fault for not noticing that Geralt was hurting, for letting him get worse and worse until he was practically catatonic.

“He’s stubborn in that way. Juniper and I have been working on it, but he still doesn’t like asking for help. I think it’s because he was alone for so long, back before he met us.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Ciri asked, pulling at a flower so hard that the roots came up with it.

“Because you should understand what you need to look for,” Yennefer said. “If I didn’t tell you that these potions were made with marigolds, if you tried to make them with roses instead, you could hardly be blamed when you set the house on fire.”

She plucked another marigold and rolled the stem back and forth in her fingers, watching the flower spin.

“But now that you do know, you have some culpability if you do make the potions wrong. And, more importantly, you can help make them correctly. Do you understand?”

She did. Or she thought she did.

“What do I look for then? When Geralt gets overwhelmed, I mean.”

Yennefer smiled at her, sharp and proud, and tucked the flower behind her ear.

“He gets tense. Clenches his jaw, sometimes his fists. His voice gets much lower, and he’ll talk even less than usual. He walks slower because it’s harder for him to orient himself. His reflexes are much slower too, though I wouldn’t recommend throwing something at him to test that one out. I did that once to prove a point, and he wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the day.”

She snorted out a laugh and went back to gathering her flowers.

“They’re things that are easy enough to notice, if you know what they mean. And now you do. So you can look out for him.”

She placed the last marigold in the cloth and bundled it shut.

“I’m sorry I didn’t—”

Yennefer held up a hand.

“You can be sorry if it happens again,” she said. “But you can’t be sorry when you didn’t have the information you needed. I forbid it.”

Strangely, that made something loosen in Ciri’s chest. She had something she could do to stop Geralt from getting hurt again. She had a responsibility to him. Something to lessen the constant helpless roar of guilt and sadness and anger. The ever-present reminder that he had been captured because of her, been tortured because of her, _was still hurting_ because of her. She could alleviate some of that pain, could, in some small way, start to make it up to him.

“Say that you’re not sorry,” Yennefer said, voice firm. “Go on.”

“I’m not sorry.”

“Again.”

“I’m _not_ sorry.”

And she meant it.

“Good girl.”

She stood and offered Ciri a hand. Her fingers were trembling. Ciri frowned.

“If Geralt’s signs are tenseness and silence,” she said. “What are yours?”

Yennefer pulled her hand back, clenched her fingers into a fist.

“The potion you gave him, for the after-effects of fireblood. I’ve seen you take it sometimes.”

Silence. Yennefer crossed her arms over her chest, bit her lip, and turned her gaze back towards the house. Like she didn’t want to look at Ciri.

“You’re just as stubborn as he is,” Ciri said. “You don’t want me to notice that you’re hurting.”

Yennefer laughed, bitter and short.

“I suppose this is the problem with this family,” she murmured. “None of us think we deserve help. Martyrs, the lot of us.”

She shook her head, and started walking towards the house. Ciri scrambled to her feet and followed.

“Human bodies weren’t meant to hold as much chaos as I held in Sodden,” Yennefer said. Still not looking at Ciri. “Just as trees aren’t meant to hold lightning. They can’t contain that much power. When they’re struck, they burst into flame.”

She held up a shaky hand, letting Ciri look at the burn marks.

“I saved the North. I saved so many lives. I was—I _am—_ a hero. Juniper and Geralt have reminded me of that, over and over again. And yet, sometimes, I’d do anything to take it all back. To let the North die so I could stay myself. So I could stay powerful and painless.”

She shook her head.

“I’m selfish at heart, little bird.”

“You’re not.” Of this, Ciri was sure. “You gave up your power, you—”

“I didn’t know what would happen when I let my chaos explode. It was hardly a conscious sacrifice.”

“Maybe. But you could have stayed in Cidaris, when Juniper asked you for your help. You owed us nothing. But you still came. You still _helped_ us, even though you knew you’d be at risk. That’s not something a selfish person does.”

Yennefer looked down at her hands. They trembled harder.

“Which potions do you need?” Ciri asked, already walking ahead to her laboratory. “I’ll fetch them for you.”

“Starsbreath,” Yennefer said. “And the rosehip cream I keep on the table.”

“Okay.”

She swung open the door and hurried to the third shelf on the right, standing up on her tiptoes to snatch up a bottle of starsbreath. It was a powerful painkiller, useful for nerve damage. Geralt had kept a bottle at his bedside constantly, in the week following their rescue. Eventually, the lingering effects of fireblood had been purged from his system, and he was able to move without pain. But it seemed that Yennefer’s damage was a bit more permanent.

Yennefer sank into the chair behind the table. The tremors were running up and down her arms now, leaving her shoulders shaking. Ciri popped the cork off the bottle and went to hand it to Yennefer. Thought better of it. Raised the potion to her lips instead.

“Drink.”

Yennefer drained the vial in a few quick swigs and leaned back with a sigh. The shaking was already subsiding.

“Thank you,” she said.

“We take care of each other,” Ciri said. “Right?”

She reached over to pick up the small pot of cream and took Yennefer’s hand in hers.

“I suppose we do,” Yennefer murmured. “I want you to promise me something.”

“What?”

She worked the cream into Yennefer’s skin, rubbing small circles over her wrists and palms.

“Let yourself be selfish.”

“Huh?”

“You have power, girl,” she said, and she finally looked at Ciri. Held her gaze. Her eyes were intent, shining with concern, with wariness. “More power than I ever did. But your body is just as fallible as mine. Don’t let this happen to you.”

“I—”

“Promise me. Don’t become a burnt-out tree. Don’t let your chaos explode. Promise me.”

There was a knot in her throat, a burning dread. Because she had so much to give to the world. So much to offer it. And if people were hurting, if people were _dying—_ how could she not offer them herself?

“Okay,” she lied. “Okay. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finally caved and made a Witcher-centric tumblr! If you want to come yell about this fic, my other fics, or witchery stuff in general you can find me at wingedquill.tumblr.com. I'm also happy to take requests if you have a prompt that you think I'd be interested in (either in this verse or in general) or just shout about headcanons. See ya there!


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I got temporarily possessed by the fluff fairy as I was writing this chapter. My apologies. Enjoy 3K words of Soft(tm) and hold on to those feelings—we'll be resuming our normal programming next chapter ;)
> 
> Also, I'm playing around with the description of this fic a bit (trying to get better at blurbing in general lol) so don't be alarmed if it changes a few more times. And if you find a description particularly bad, please do let me know.

Yennefer’s cottage felt like a bubble sometimes, a little island away from the rest of the world. They were an hour’s ride from Cintra, Ciri knew that, but it felt so much farther. Some days, she forgot that the rest of the Continent existed. She had spent her whole life in these walls, in the gathering warmth of summer, surrounded by her family. She had spent her whole life with a lute in her hands, getting better and better as her fingers waltzed through new melodies. She had spent her whole life talking over her past, present, and future with Yennefer, digging through the painful memories and laying them out in the open to air.

She had spent her whole life watching Geralt and Juniper dance around each other.

And it was starting to drive her up the walls.

Now that she knew—now that she could give their relationship a name, call it _love_ —she couldn’t stop knowing. Couldn’t stop cataloging all the little moments between them, which she had previously put down to a twenty-year-long friendship. Mostly sweet, yes, but there was a tinge of—of longing, of yearning, of quiet, desperate heartbreak lingering just beneath the surface.

***

_Clang. Crash. Thud._

“Fuck.”

Ciri winced. A week ago, Yennefer had obtained a pair of practice swords from the market, and the melody of Juniper and Geralt’s training had quickly become a familiar sound. Clashing and stomping and cursing as Juniper knocked Geralt to the ground again and again and again.

He was lasting longer each time, granted, the fits of sparring going from twenty seconds to three minutes. But he still had yet to beat Juniper.

“I think we’re good for the day,” Juniper said, reaching down and hauling Geralt to his feet. “Keep working on your parry, you’re overcorrecting to the left a bit.”

“Ugh. You’re right,” Geralt said, rolling his shoulder to work out the soreness. Despite the loss, a smile was dancing around the corners of his lips. “Same time tomorrow?”

“As always.”

“Hmm. I need a bath.”

He walked back into the house, still stretching out his shoulder. Ciri sidled up to stand next to Juniper. A question had been burning on her lips for days now.

“Why don’t you ever let him win?”

Juniper laughed, shaking his head.

“How do you think he’d feel about that?”

“Maybe he wouldn’t know.”

“Oh, he’d know. He knows exactly how good he is and exactly how good I am, and if he wins because of anything other than his own skill, he will be furious.”

“You really know him, don’t you?”

_Tell him, you idiot. Or at least tell me._

Juniper ducked his head, staring down at his sword with a soft grin.

“I suppose I do,” he said.

***

It was a quiet afternoon and Ciri had just finished harvesting a bushel of lavender for Yennefer. She was learning that she loved working in the garden, hands in the dirt, getting lost in the repetitive motions of plant, smooth out the dirt, water, weed, harvest. It calmed her mind in the same way playing a familiar song did. She liked having something to do with her hands, liked coaxing life out of the earth and magic out of the air. Liked looking down at the callouses on her fingers and thinking _I earned these._

It was a feeling she never got as a pampered princess, so she chased after it here, chased after the life and the work and the satisfaction of being useful. Yennefer certainly wasn’t complaining, gladly handing the reins of herb-gathering over to Ciri. She preferred to focus her time on inventing new potions, not on collecting her ingredients.

Ciri slipped into the hallway with her basket full of sweet-smelling herbs and her fingernails caked with dirt, planning on carrying her haul to Yennefer and questioning her about the sleep draught she was working on. But the tight, pained voice coming from the living room stopped her in her tracks.

_Juniper?_

He didn’t sound okay. His breath was coming in sharp, panicked gasps, loud enough to hear in the hallway, and his words were squeezed into the tiny gaps between them, like he could only just get enough air to speak.

“I can’t, _I can’t, I can’t, Geralt, I—”_

“You can. Just focus on me, okay? Focus on my voice. Focus on my heartbeat.”

“I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t be able to hear—your heartbeat—I shouldn’t, I _can’t—”_

The sentence choked off into a strangled sob.

“Okay,” Geralt said, voice remarkably steady. “Then follow my breath. Put your hand on my chest, if it helps.”

“I—I’d have to look at it, I’d have—”

“Close your eyes.”

“I don’t—”

“Close your eyes. I’m here. I’ve got you. Just focus.”

Ciri bit down the urge to run into the room and curl up next to them, to hold Juniper and tell him it would be alright. She remembered the night he had told her about his curse, remembered the guilt that had rolled off of him in waves, remembered the shame he had felt that she had seen him break down. Remembered how Geralt had asked Yennefer to take her out of the room so she couldn’t watch him sobbing over the loss of his sight.

Neither of them wanted her to see them in pain.

And part of her prickled with indignation at the thought that she wasn’t allowed to help them. But a bigger part of her realized that the last thing Juniper needed right now was guilt and shame. So she gathered the basket closer to her chest and tiptoed down the hallway as quietly as she could, sneaking away to Yennefer’s laboratory.

***

Later that evening, there was a knock on her door. She pushed it open to see Geralt standing in the hallway, worry creasing his brow into soft wrinkles.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

“You heard me,” she said. “In the hallway. Didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.”

“I know.”

He held out his arms and she fell into them gratefully. Because she wasn’t going to bring it up, she _wasn’t,_ but hearing Juniper shuddering apart like that—it had been a slap in the face, a reminder that, despite his slow return to music and humor and affection, the curse was still tearing him apart.

“He’s okay, most of the time,” Geralt murmured. “But sometimes he’s not. Just like any of us.”

“It hurt,” Ciri said, and shit, she was crying into Geralt’s shoulder _again._ She sniffled, trying to get herself under control. “Hearing him like that, it hurt.”

“I know,” Geralt said as he rubbed her back, and it sounded like something inside him had shattered. “I know.”

***

She was dashing through the field behind their house, slipping between clumps of grass to get to the red patches of wildflowers that were just beginning to bloom. Gathering small bunches of them in her hands, determined to pick enough to make flower crowns for each of the horses.

She was rooting around for the next clump when she heard footsteps meandering through the grass some twenty feet from her. And then, Juniper’s voice, low and soft, like he didn’t want to break the early morning peace of the air.

“They’re red. But not like blood. More like a cardinal. The kind of red that makes you think of life, not death—you’ve got that color in your head?”

“Yeah,” Geralt said.

“Good. They’re tiny. Delicate-looking. Like the wind could catch a petal and tear it away in a second. But they’re beautiful in their fragility. 

“Hmm. Like butterflies?”

“Exactly, yeah.”

He was describing the world to Geralt. Telling him about the little bits of beauty that he couldn’t quite grasp with hearing and smell alone. Her heart throbbed in her chest, warm and heavy all at once. It hadn’t occurred to her that Geralt might miss things like the wildflowers, the sky, the butterflies winging their way over the field. It hadn’t occurred to her that there was a way to give at least some of that back to him.

She would ask Juniper how he did it, she resolved, as she popped up with an armful of flowers and ran over to greet them. She would ask him how he strung his words together, how he painted a picture with sound alone, and she would learn to do the same.

***

_Clang. Crash._

“Oh shit—!”

_Thud._

Juniper lay in the dust, the tip of Geralt’s sword digging into his throat. All was still for a moment, both men breathing heavily. Then Juniper let out a wild cheer. Geralt pulled back his sword and Juniper climbed to his feet, pumping his arms in the air.

“You did it!” he cried. “You beat me!”

“You won’t be so happy after I’ve beaten you ten times in a row,” Geralt said, flipping his sword around in his hand. Despite the sardonic words, pride was thrumming through his voice. Satisfaction. Happiness.

Because he had won fair and square.

“Oh it is _on,”_ Juniper said, leaning down to snatch up his own sword from the dirt. “I haven’t had a proper sparring partner since my training days, this is gonna be _fun.”_

“You know what? I think you’re right.”

***

Juniper was pacing around the living room like a caged cat, and Ciri could feel herself growing tenser and tenser just watching him. His anxiety was palpable, a thick fog that rolled over every surface in the room, coating the walls and furniture in stress.

“They’ll be fine,” Ciri reminded him for the fifth time. Reminded _herself_ for the fifth time.

“Of course they will,” Juniper said for the fifth time. He took a deep breath and walked over to the couch, sitting down next to Ciri. But he held himself tight, tense, like not moving was physically hurting him.

Yennefer had decided that, while Geralt had gotten quite good at navigating their house and the surrounding woods, he needed more practice in crowded environments. So she’d asked him to accompany her on her errands in town that morning. It was an important step, Ciri knew that. It was a _good_ step, even, one more stride towards Geralt’s independence.

“He’s his own person,” Juniper murmured, picking at his fingernails. Crossing and uncrossing his legs. “He needs to do this, but—”

“But you don’t like him being somewhere you can’t reach,” Ciri finished.

“Yeah.”

“Neither do I.”

Nilfgaard hadn’t been spotted in the area for three months. Cintra was firmly back in the control of the Northern Armies. But that didn’t stop the little voice in the back of Ciri’s head from whispering _what if, what if, what if?_ Over and over again, until it became almost a mantra. What if there was a spy, what if there was a price on Geralt’s head, what if Nilfgaard decided to attack Cintra today? All those scenarios swirled around her head, spinning around the worst question of all. What if they took him again?

“We’re being foolish,” she said.

“Definitely,” Juniper agreed.

“They’ll be _fine.”_

“They will.”

“Geralt’s getting good with a sword again.”

“And Yennefer has enough bombs to blow up a city. They’ll be okay.”

“We should be scared of them, shouldn’t we? Not for them,” Ciri laughed, high-pitched and a bit hysterical. The thought of anyone getting the drop on them was ridiculous. And yet—and yet the clearing. And yet the _fucking_ clearing.

“We should. But either way, let’s go outside. It’ll be better than sitting in here and stewing.

That was how she wound up tearing through the field in a thrill of adrenaline, arms pumping, legs flashing, Juniper ducking and weaving ahead of her, running in a comically elaborate zig-zag. Laughter bubbled out of her throat as she launched herself forwards, tackling Juniper’s legs and sending him crashing into the grass.

She hadn’t played tag since she was—five? Six? Before the lessons of propriety and courtliness began, before she was expected to sit silently in stuffy rooms and listen to long, droning lectures about Cintra’s _(fake)_ history. It felt odd, to compare that to this, to compare the palace to the field, to compare her old tutors to Juniper, laughing beneath her as she dug her fingers into his sides.

Something to speak to Yennefer about, she thought. A new thread to start following as she worked on untangling the mess of emotions in her chest.

Juniper shoved her off of him and she let the momentum carry her, rolling down the small hill towards the cottage. She shoved herself to her feet, planning to take off towards the gardens, but before she could, there were hands under her armpits, swinging her up into the air. She yelped, startled, but quickly relaxed upon hearing the warm chuckle in her ear.

“Geralt!” she shouted, twisting around in his grip so she could see his face. Her jaw dropped. “Your hair!”

It had been cut up to his ears, falling in feathery chunks around his face. It didn’t look _bad,_ but she had grown used to seeing it flowing down his back, or wreathed around his head in elaborate braids, courtesy of Juniper.

“Figured it was time to change it up a bit,” he said, bouncing her up and down. “Now where’s—?”

“Ah! Geralt,” Juniper gasped, panting theatrically as he ran down the hill. “You’ve captured the beast! And shorn your lovely locks!”

He looked just as shocked as Ciri felt, staring openly at the new haircut. A flash of hurt flickered over his face, and Ciri could guess why. No more braiding Geralt’s hair while they sat by the fire, no more fiddling with it as they listened to Ciri play her music.

“The beast?” Geralt asked, completely ignoring Juniper’s second declaration. Juniper blinked away the confusion, and when he spoke, his voice held nothing but warmth and put-on indignation.

“Indeed. Why, she knocked me to the ground, got grass stains all over my lovely new shirt and _then,_ and this is the worst thing of all, she _tickled_ me.”

“That is quite beastly behavior,” Geralt agreed somberly. “Whatever shall we do with you?”

“You could let me go?”

“Hmm.”

He swung her in a wide circle, grinning at her shrieks of laughter, before lowering her back to the ground.

“Have you learned your lesson, little monster?” Juniper asked.

“Nope.”

“That’s my girl,” Geralt smiled, ignoring Juniper’s squawks of consternation. “Come on. Let’s go back inside. I found something in town I think you’ll like.”

It was directed to Juniper, and Geralt sounded—nervous? What was this thing he’d bought in town? Something silly, she guessed. Soft and sentimental in the way Geralt wasn’t supposed to be. Flowers? A necklace? Maybe a new sword?

Yennefer was already in the living room, sorting through a small pile of parcels.

“Come over here, little bird,” she called. “I bought you a new cloak.”

“Oh! Thank you.” Hers was getting a bit frayed around the edges, and she had been thinking that she’d need a new one soon. She walked over to Yennefer and watched as she pulled a brilliant emerald cloak out of one of the parcels and held it up for Ciri’s inspection.

“It’s beautiful,” Ciri said, reaching forward to feel the soft fabric.

“I thought you’d like it. See Geralt?” Yennefer said, lightly teasing. “It’s not that difficult.”

Geralt ignored her, taking a deep breath as he walked over to the couch and picked up a soft leather case. Ciri’s breath caught in her throat. _Oh._

His gift for Juniper wasn’t something silly or sentimental. It wasn’t something that courting lovers gave each other, it wasn’t a sword or a bright new bit of armor.

“I um. I got you this,” he said, turning to hand it to Juniper. He took it with trembling fingers, staring down at it like it was the most precious thing he’d ever seen.

“You bought me a lute?” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Mmhm.”

Tears were already gathering in Juniper’s eyes as he knelt to the ground and undid the straps of the case. He pulled out the lute and cradled it in his arms.

“It’s strung backwards,” he choked. “So I can—so I can play the chords right-handed.”

“I know you’ve missed playing your more complicated pieces,” Geralt said. “It’ll take a bit to get used to playing backwards but—”

“But _nothing,_ Geralt, this is—I _love it.”_

He set the lute to the side, got to his feet, and wrapped Geralt in a hug.

_“Thank you.”_

“You don’t need to thank me. You deserve it.”

Juniper laughed, soft and wet, and peeled away from Geralt to pick the lute back up.

“How did you pay for this?” he asked, running his fingers over the fine gold engravings. Geralt swallowed, shifting from foot to foot. And yeah, how _had_ Geralt been able to afford an instrument like that? Nilfgaard had taken all that he had, and he hadn’t exactly been accepting contracts.

“Yennefer—” he began.

“Yennefer offered to pay for it, but you were too stubborn to accept,” she said, cutting off whatever lie he was about to tell. “And fortunately—or unfortunately, as I see it—the luthier fancied himself a bit of an artist.”

“An artist?” Juniper asked.

“Yen, don’t—”

“Shut up, this was one of the stupidest decisions you’ve ever made, you don’t get to keep it secret.”

Geralt sighed and threw his hands up in the air.

“Fine,” he said.

“Good. Yes, an artist. He didn’t just make lutes you see, he made all kinds of instruments—violins, cellos…the bows to go with them. And he took one look at the famous White Wolf and promised to give him the pick of his stock if he could cut enough hair to string a bow.”

Yennefer was right. That was possibly one of the dumbest decisions Geralt had ever made. Cutting off his hair when Yennefer was right there with enough money to buy every lute in the shop. But at the same time, it was one of the most romantic gestures she’d ever seen.

“He—you—you sold your hair to buy me a lute?" Juniper sputtered. “I—Geralt, _why?”_

“Like I said. You deserve it.”

“I don’t—” He glanced from the lute, to Geralt, to the lute again. “I don’t. I don’t deserve this, Geralt, I don’t—”

He froze. Ran his fingers over the strings of the lute, eyes darting back and forth like he was assembling a puzzle in his head.

“Oh. Oh gods how did I not—I’m supposed to be a _poet._ How did I not notice?”

Geralt took a step backwards, wrapping his arms around himself like he was trying to shrink through the floor and vanish. Ciri’s heart ratcheted up in tempo.

“Notice what, Juniper?” Yennefer asked, a smirk dancing in her words.

“You’re in love with me,” Juniper breathed, and his voice held all the awe of a man seeing the ocean for the first time. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re _in love with me.”_

Geralt ducked his head, curled even tighter into himself, and nodded.

“And that’s our cue to go,” Yennefer whispered in Ciri’s ear, wrapping a hand around her shoulder and steering her towards the door.

But Ciri craned her head to look over her shoulder as they went. And just before they left the room, she saw Juniper step forward, cup Geralt’s cheek in his hand, and pull him into a gentle kiss.

She grinned, and let Yennefer lead her off to the laboratory.

Fucking _finally._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If that was too fluffy for you, you're in luck! I have no self-control so I have, shock of shocks, started writing another Witcher fic. It centers around the premise that all witchers are victims of an elaborate mind control curse that prevents them from leaving the Path. Pretty angsty, as you can imagine, but there will be a happy ending, so if that suits your fancy go check it out at:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/23416249/chapters/56121211


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! Sorry for the crazy delay on this chapter, I got sucked into working on a oneshot that I thought would be short but wound up being like...13K. On the bright side, if you want to read a sad-soft piece about Geralt coming to terms with being gay, you can find one [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24046216)
> 
> Also! A few people have made some _amazing_ fanart for this verse and I am so, so grateful. I seriously screamed when I saw these—I am so immensely honored that people would spend time and effort illustrating my work, thank you to these artists from the bottom of my heart.
> 
> [bamf-jaskier](https://bamf-jaskier.tumblr.com) made an [amazing illustration](https://bamf-jaskier.tumblr.com/post/615307330058420224/20-years-undone-so-if-you-read-my-posts-a-lot) of the twenty year undoing breaking. (Warning for hand trauma, Juniper is in the process of losing his finger)
> 
> And [stars-in-my-damn-eyes](https://stars-in-my-damn-eyes.tumblr.com) drew Juniper and some other wonderful Witcher!Jaskiers in [this lovely lineup](https://stars-in-my-damn-eyes.tumblr.com/post/617867060322713600/witcherjaskiers-anyone-id-say-something-about)
> 
> Thank you both so much, you guys rock! Now onwards to the fic :D

If it was up to Ciri, she would have them stay in that cabin forever, living in their small patch of the world, far away from where the rest of it could touch them. Summer stretched on and on, and for a while, she thought it might be endless. That this peace could be endless. All four of them healing, all four of them becoming better. Juniper and Geralt growing into the warmer versions of themselves, discovering who they were separately and together. Yennefer wresting bits of her chaos back into order and inventing all manner of wild potions. And Ciri herself, talking out the tight knot of pain in her chest and giving her feelings over to her music and magic when words weren’t enough.

It was good. _She_ felt good. And they were becoming something like a family. A love stretched between the four of them like a spiderweb or a tapestry, binding them together in a beautiful picture. It was a hard-won love, forged through pain and an innumerable amount of difficult conversations, but it still felt more comfortable than any love she had felt in Cintra. They were hers and she was theirs and that was that. There were no conditions on it.

She wanted to bask in that love forever. Wanted to take it into her chest and fingers and spin it into a million songs, show the world that _this is what happiness is, this is what family is, this is what love is._ So she did exactly that, filling page after page of her notebook with lyrics about her family. Geralt, the greatest hero The Continent had ever known, who fought through every single awful thing the world had thrown at him and still found the strength to care about people. Yennefer, the witch who sacrificed control of her chaos to save the world, who nevertheless found a way to take back her power. And Juniper. Juniper, the witcher born from the death of a man made of music, kindness, love. Who wove the two halves of himself together stitch by straining stitch.

Her patchwork family.

The songs weren’t as pure as some of the ones she had heard Juniper sing. They didn’t depict their subjects as flawless paragons, but as broken people stubbornly clawing themselves back together. Maybe that was why she was scared to sing them, scared that her family would hear her depictions of them and think she found them lacking in some way. The last thing on earth she wanted to do was hurt any of them.

So, for now at least, the songs were hers and hers alone, as she hummed out the melodies under her breath, as she worked out the chords while the rest of the house slept. She carried the notebook in her pocket at all times, just in case she got a fresh burst of inspiration. Which happened often enough when she saw Geralt and Juniper sparring, Geralt grinning wildly as he whirled and spun almost as easily as he’d used to, or when she heard Yennefer cheering in triumph when the potion she’d been working on for weeks finally came out right.

She was so focused on the ballads, on making them shine, that she practically forgot what was going on beyond the walls of their cozy home. The war burning through The Continent, the war that had taken her first home, that had taken so many lives, that had taken Geralt’s sight and Yennefer’s control. That had nearly killed all of them.

Forgetting it was stupid. It was selfish, especially since the Nilfgaardians were so focused on her. At least _some_ part of this war was her fault, or _not_ her fault— _don’t feel so fucking guilty, gods—_ but she was at least a factor in it all. But it felt so far away, and while she was in the cottage, she could be someone other than the princess of a ruined kingdom. She could be a daughter, an aspiring musician, a talented young alchemist.

So she didn’t seek out the war. She didn’t seek out news of the battles and bodies, of where Nilfgaard was, where the Northern Armies were, who had control of what town on any given day. She didn’t look. But her family did. She often heard them talking in low voices in the parlor, saw Juniper guiding Geralt’s fingers over a map half-swathed in black. And she couldn’t help but glance down at the map when that happened, couldn’t help but notice the black line creeping further and further north.

And when she realized that Nilfgaard was gaining ground, a familiar clawing nausea settled down in her stomach. Because every inch gobbled up by that line meant lives lost, villages burned, crops destroyed. The war was killing people. Killing _her_ people. And she couldn’t just ignore it.

“Nilfgaard is getting closer, isn’t it?” she asked Juniper one evening, after they’d played a few jaunty duets on their lutes. They were sitting on top of the hill behind their cottage, watching the fireflies flicker over the field, and it felt wrong to shatter this peace with questions of the war. But the fear had been gathering in her for the past several weeks, and it was practically bursting from her tongue at this point.

Juniper sighed, strumming his fingers absently over his lute.

“It is,” he said. “We’ve heard reports of troops in closer and closer towns. Rumor has it they’re trying to retake Cintra.”

“Why?” she asked. “My—the royals are all dead.”

“You can call them your family, you know,” Juniper said, and his voice sounded pained.

“You’re my family.”

“You can have two families.”

She didn’t know how to explain that she doesn’t _want_ two families, so she just nodded and hummed under her breath as she tapped her fingers on the body of her lute.

Juniper snorted.

“You sound like your father,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Getting out of difficult conversations by grunting at them.”

“Is it working?”

“Not on me.” He set his lute aside and propped his chin up with his hand, looking at her like she would look at one of her tutors to get out of a particularly difficult lesson. She laughed despite herself.

“C’mon,” he said. “You know you can talk to me.”

“I know,” she said. “I do, it’s just difficult to explain.”

“Take your time,” he said, sitting back and dropping the intense eye contact.

“It might be a ‘few weeks later’ kind of conversation,” she warned him, plucking aimlessly at her lute.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Like I said, take your time. As long as you talk about it _eventually.”_

“I will. I promise.”

“Good.”

They sat in warm silence for a moment, and Ciri breathed in sweet honeysuckle smell all around them, feeling like she could drink in the summer air and make it a part of her forever. But then Juniper sighed, and she was reminded of the original point of the conversation.

“Nilfgaard is attacking Cintra for a lot more than its royals,” he said. “The city makes a good stronghold for one. It’s full of armor and weapons. And a lot of the fleeing people from the surrounding villages have made their home there, at least for a while.”

“Why would Nilfgaard want a bunch of peasants?”

Juniper took a deep breath, and when he looked at her, there was nothing but pity in his eyes.

“Lots of reasons. They could make them slaves. Soldiers.” Another deep breath and he reached out to rest his hand on her shoulder. “Cannon fodder.”

She felt sick. Her people, the people that her grandmother hadn’t protected, turned into slaves, killed by the hundreds. All while she sat here and worried about some silly songs.

She had forgotten her responsibility, her duty, and now–

“We have to help them,” she said.

“We can’t.”

“What do you _mean_ we can’t?”

She jumped to her feet, clutching her lute to her chest. Her chaos hummed beneath her skin, the same chaos that had turned a powerful sorceress into a tree, that had turned suits of armor into coffins of needles, that had flattened forests and carved a trench in the earth itself. What did Juniper mean _she couldn’t help?_

“We took the castle once,” she said, “We can do it again.”

“That was a sneak attack against just barely enough men to hold a castle,” Juniper said, sounding like he was wrestling with his voice to keep it calm. “It’s not nearly the same thing as going against a well-prepared, gigantic army.”

“With another well-prepared, gigantic army on our side,” she said, because she’d heard tales of what the Northern Kingdoms could do against those who stood in their way.

“And then we get caught in the crossfire,” Juniper said, climbing to his feet and resting his hands on her shoulders, trying to look her in the eye. She jerked her chin away, staring off into the distance, where she knew Cintra lay.

“Or we help turn the tide of the battle,” she said.

“We have no place on a battlefield,” he said. “Battles like that, they swallow you up, they—one wrong move and you’re dead. Or crippled for life, or—”

“That's the same risk every soldier in the Northern Kingdoms is taking, and we’re better equipped than any of them,” Ciri said, raising her chin and trying her best to look like a queen. “How can we ask them to sacrifice themselves and not do the same?”

“We’re _not_ asking them—”

“But I am, aren’t I? 'Cause I’m the queen now, aren’t I? And I’ve been running from it all this time, but I need to go back, I need to protect them, I—”

Juniper shook his head all through her speech, eyes growing wider and wider.

“You don’t need to do anything,” he said, hands tightening around her shoulders. She shouted wordlessly and shrugged him off, taking a few staggering steps down the hill before whirling around to face him.

“Why not?” she snarled.

“Because you’re a child,” he said, and he sounded like his heart was breaking. “Because you’re _my_ child. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“You can’t protect me forever,” she said, guilt burning its way up her throat. “I’ll need to face this sooner or later.”

“Then let it be later,” Juniper pleaded, stepping towards her. “Please let it be later. The Northern Armies can handle it. They don’t need you throwing your life away before it can even begin.”

_Don’t become a burnt-out tree,_ Yennefer murmured in her ear.

She exhaled, and scrubbed at her face with her sleeve, wiping away the tears that she only now realized she was shedding.

“Can I hug you?” Juniper asked, taking another step forward. She nodded, and fell forward into his arms, feeling very drained.

“You really think the Northern Armies can handle it?” she whispered against his chest.

“They have once before,” he said. “I’m sure they can again.”

“Right,” she said. “Of course. You’re right. I—sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Juniper murmured. “You’re okay.”

***

That would have been the end of it, if the mage hadn’t shown up two days later.

She came, of course, when Juniper and Geralt were both out of the house, picking up a small contract an hour north of them, in the opposite direction of the war. A few ghouls, according to Juniper. And she was nervous for them, of course she was, but that nervousness had been easily assuaged by the look of sheer joy on Geralt’s face at the prospect of hunting again.

So they’d left, arm in arm, Juniper chattering away about their ‘battle plan' and Geralt pointing out that they didn’t need a battle plan for three low-stakes monsters, that they’d be better off planning where they should spend the coin that they’d earn.

They’d gotten on their horses and ridden off, and Ciri had been looking forward to a quiet afternoon tending to the herb garden, followed by some potions lessons with Yennefer. But they weren’t alone for half an hour before Yennefer tensed, dropping the book she was holding and dashing across the garden to grab Ciri’s shoulder and pull her to her feet.

“Go to your room and stay very, very quiet,” she said, herding her towards the house.

“But—”

_“Now.”_ Her tone left no room for argument, so Ciri dashed inside and scrambled up the stairs. She did not, however, stay in her room. Instead, she snatched up her lute from the bed and slipped out into the hallway, getting as close to the staircase as she dared and flattening herself against the wall.

She could still remember Fringilla turning Yennefer’s potion into flowers with a snap of her fingers. If a mage of similar caliber was here—and that must be it, no one else could get through the wards—Yennefer wouldn’t stand a chance. She had to be ready to jump in.

The door opened and a woman’s voice filtered through the house, low and steady and brimming with power.

“Yennefer. I must say you do make yourself difficult to find.”

“Tissaia.” Yennefer’s voice was quieter than Ciri had ever heard it.

“You’re looking well,” the mage— _Tissaia—_ said. “Though you never struck me as the type to play house.”

“I fancied a change of pace.”

“Did you now? Doesn’t have anything to do with the scars on your face?”

“I know you think me that vain but, surprisingly, no,” Yennefer said, voice as cold and cutting as an ice storm. “Had more to do with my chaos, well, exploding. Turns out that lightning can do a lot of damage when you forget the bottle.”

“And I’m sorry that that happened to you,” Tissaia said, and there was a hint of sadness there.

“Sorry that it _happened?”_

“Quite.”

“Not sorry for any, I don’t know, _role_ that you might have played?”

Tissaia sighed, loud and exasperated.

“You knew the risk you were taking,” she said.

“I—I’m sorry, I must have missed that lesson in Aretuza’s curriculum.”

“It is not Aretuza’s fault that you were so out-of-tune with your chaos that you couldn’t recognize it was hurting you.”

Yennefer’s responding laugh was as shrill as shattering glass.

“ _Wow._ Always finding a way to blame me for everything you’ve done to me. I can’t believe I ever expected anything more from you.”

“Believe what you want of me, but—Yennefer—”

“Spit it out. You want something, don’t you?”

“You—”

“Don’t try to couch it in pretty words about my worth, Rectoress. Speak plainly.”

“…Nilfgaard is at Cintra’s gates.”

Ciri’s stomach twisted.

“And why does that concern me?” Yennefer said, boredom flowing through her voice. _Why does that concern her?_ People were dying, more people would die, _Ciri’s_ people would die, and—and Yennefer was acting like she didn’t care at all.

“They are far greater in numbers than we anticipated,” she said. “The Northern Armies are no match for them.”

“Again, why does this concern me?” Yennefer asked, though her voice trembled a bit this time.

“I heard what you did in Cintra before,” Tissaia said. “Your chaos might be damaged, but you can still topple walls, you could still make a wall of fire, you—”

“So you want me to make myself into more of a martyr than before?” Yennefer laughed. “That’s—that’s low even for you. Sodden cracked my chaos, you’re asking me to _obliterate_ it. You know that, right?”

“You would be a hero.”

“I don’t _care._ I don’t need to be a hero anymore.” And Yennefer’s voice is getting higher and shriller, her last few words coming out as a scream.

“So you think you’re worth more than everyone who will die when Cintra falls?” Tissaia shouts, matching her in pitch and volume. “Because it _will_ fall.”

“Do _you_ think you’re worth more?”

Silence. Both women were breathing heavily, loud enough for Ciri to hear from where she stood.

“You’ve asked me to sacrifice myself, again and again,” said Yennefer, voice quiet again, though much more steady. “But you’re just as powerful as I am. If you care so much about Cintra, let your own chaos explode. I’ve already lost enough of myself so that you can stay whole.”

“You’ll regret this,” Tissaia said, voice trembling. “When you hear of the deaths tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now. When you hear of the children slaughtered by the hundreds, when you hear of the people dragged away for gods know what. When you learn of all the blood on your hands. You’ll wish that you could turn back the clock to this moment and agree to help me.”

_Listen to her, listen to her, please gods Yennefer, just listen to her._

But Yennefer always stayed firm in her course, in her pride. Even, apparently, when that pride meant sacrificing innocents.

“And you’ll wish that you had an inch of the courage that you always ask of me,” Yennefer said, and she sounded very tired indeed. “Goodbye, Tissaia.”

There was the sound of footsteps as Yennefer turned and walked away, presumably heading for her laboratory. And then a sigh that nearly sounded like a sob, Tissaia breaking down as her one hope left her.

Ciri stared down at the lute in her arms.

If Yennefer wasn’t willing to help, then she would have to do.

It was better this way, anyway. Yennefer was right. She shouldn’t have to sacrifice herself. That was the queen’s job.

Ciri gathered all her resolve and stepped out from behind the wall.

Tissaia stood at the bottom of the staircase, shoulders heaving, clenching and unclenching her fists. Ciri cleared her throat and her head snapped up, eyes zeroing in on the lute in Ciri’s arms.

Ciri walked down the stairs, keeping her steps slow and measured, regal.

“You’re the bard,” Tissaia breathed. “From the battle of Cintra. Aren’t you? I’ve heard stories about—”

“I am,” she said. “I want to help.”

Tissaia blinked at her for a moment, studying her face. Then she smiled. With a snap of her fingers, a portal appeared behind her.

“Then help you shall,” she said, holding out her hand.

Rapid footsteps. Low cursing. So Yennefer had heard them.

“Ciri!” she shouted, and her voice was _frantic._ “Don’t—”

But it was time to stop hiding in their cottage and hoping that summer would last forever. Time to face the world that her grandmother had left her.

She took Tissaia’s hand and followed her into the portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah...sorry about that cliffhanger. I promise that you won't need to wait a month for the next update, I'm _really_ excited about what's coming next.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. I lied about not taking a month. Sorry about that!
> 
> On the bright side, I have some more ~amazing fanart~ to share with y'all, courtesy of some truly wonderful people over on tumblr. 
> 
> [ striffyisme ](https://striffyisme.tumblr.com) did a beautiful [ picture of Juniper ](https://striffyisme.tumblr.com/post/618318015316017152/wingedquill-striffyisme-this-is) after the breaking of the curse. 
> 
> and [ astraaeterna ](https://astraaeterna.tumblr.com) did a [lovely lineup ](https://astraaeterna.tumblr.com/post/621108196284792832/inspired-by-stars-in-my-damn-eyes-to-throw) of a bunch of witcher!Jaskiers, including Juniper!
> 
> Thank you both so, so much!

The smell hit Ciri as soon as she stepped out of the portal. She’d thought she knew what suffering smelled like—the blood-and-smoke stench when Nilfgaard had first taken Cintra, the reek of unwashed bodies and pain when Ciri, Juniper, and Yen had freed their prisoners. Those smells had sunk into her skin, and it had taken her weeks to feel clean of them. But this…she didn’t think she’d ever feel clean from this.

This was the smell of war.

It was a mix of a butcher’s shop, a privy, and a mass grave, blood and guts layered over shit layered over the gut-churning horror of decay. It made her want to empty her stomach immediately, but that would only compound the awfulness, add a layer of bile over everything else. So she breathed through her mouth, short and shallow, and tried her best not to be visibly disturbed.

With her stomach under control, she lifted her head to take in her surroundings. She was standing on one of the outermost streets of Cintra, in the shadow of the city wall. From the other side, she could hear the sounds of the battle, clashing steel, explosions, the screams of horses and men alike. All around her, people were leaning out of the doors and windows of half-burnt houses, watching the wall warily. Like they were waiting for it to fall.

“It’s already started?” she asked, fear rising in her throat. She wanted to help, but the idea of stepping out into that din with nothing but the lute in her arms was—it made her chest feel like it was stuffed full of cotton, made her legs feel like lead, made her mouth feel like parchment.

“Yes,” Tissaia said, taking in the scared faces like she was a queen surveying her court. “And we’re losing. Which is why time is of the essence.”

“Wait but you…you just portaled into the city, why couldn’t Nilfgaard—?”

“Specialized wards. They only let select people in. We’re safe here, at least from that kind of attack.”

She put her hand on Ciri’s shoulder, and led her away from the wall, towards the heart of the city. Relief washed over her like clean water. It wasn’t time to step into the battlefield just yet. She had a bit more time to steady herself, to remind herself why she was here.

Her people. Her duty. Her responsibility.

They walked down familiar streets that Ciri had not tread in a long, long time, but that her feet could still follow easily. This was her home. Her muscles had grown around the twists and turns of Cintra’s roads. It was shameful, that she would allow herself to forget them.

They headed not for the palace, as Ciri would have expected, but for the city library. Mages and soldiers alike bustled in and out, lugging armfuls of bombs, scrolls of parchment that must be maps, broken swords and empty quivers.

“Welcome to our headquarters,” Tissaia said.

“Why not the palace?”

“More centralized,” said a man standing at the doorway, before Tissaia could answer. “Quicker to get to the wall. Should Nilfgaard breach it, we can portal back to the palace before they can reach us.”

“Stregobor,” Tissaia said, in a voice that implied she would quite like to hurl him over the battlements. She had heard her grandmother use it often enough on certain nobles.

“Tissaia,” Stregobor replied, seemingly unbothered. “I sensed your chaos enter our wards. I did not sense Yennefer. Your mission, I take it, was unsuccessful.”

There was no question in his voice, just a gloating smugness. Ciri bristled under Tissaia’s hand. This man reminded her far too much of the people who sneered when Geralt or Juniper came back injured after a hunt. The people who demanded help, only to laugh when their helpers suffered. When they _failed._

“Not unsuccessful, no. Just successful in an unexpected way.”

She nudged Ciri forward, none-too-gently.

“Meet the bard from the last battle of Cintra.”

The mocking look vanished from his eyes, replaced with something like…awe? No, that wasn’t it. Curiosity.

“The rumors said you were young,” he murmured. “But I thought they were exaggerating. If you have enough power to turn one of Aretuza’s most esteemed graduates into a tree, then—well, you might just have a power never before seen on the Continent. Or at least, very rarely seen.”

“There hasn’t been an eclipse in seventeen years,” Tissaia snapped. The air around them felt very cold. “How old are you, girl?”

“…fourteen,” Ciri whispered, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

“The Black Sun is not the only way to gain dangerous levels of power,” Stregobor said. “She will come to Aretuza when this is all over. You will teach her how to control it.”

“No!” Ciri tightened her hands around the lute. “I won’t. I have a life, a family, I don’t need—”

“All of our girls have lives and families,” Stregobor scoffed. “But they understand that the study of chaos is more important than—”

“I am not one of _your girls.”_ She shrugged off Tissaia’s hand and took a step backwards, pressing her fingers down over the lute strings. “And if you try and make me one, you’ll get the same treatment as Fringilla.”

“See?” Stregobor turned to Tissaia. “Combative, threatening, violent—”

“You’re trying to drag her away from her family, Stregobor,” Tissaia said. “I’d be combative too.”

“Surely you can see the danger—”

“We are in the middle of a war,” she said. “There are far worse monsters around us, far worse threats. And I’m done letting you see danger in every woman born with a bit of extra power.”

“But—”

“If you go against this girl’s wishes, you go against my own. And every mage I’ve ever taught. Including Yennefer, whom I’m assuming is her family, is that right?”

Ciri nodded, still not taking her fingers off the strings.

“You’re making a mistake,” Stregobor growled.

“Then it’s a mistake that will help me sleep far easier at night. Now, shall we discuss why this young bard is actually here?”

Stregobor stared her down for a moment longer, before nodding and whirling on his feet, storming back into the castle.

“Thank you,” Ciri whispered. She would have fought to the last breath of song in her body, but she knew she wouldn’t have stood a chance against all the mages in this place, if they really wanted to take her.

“Don’t thank me,” Tissaia said, and there’s a look on her face that is almost like sadness, almost like fear. “Not before the battle.”

And she half-wanted to say _I don’t think I can do it, I think this was a mistake, I want to go home, please take me home._

But. Her people. Her people. Her people.

“Tell me what I need to do,” she said.

“Nilfgaard is concentrating most of its attacks on the southern wall,” Tissaia said, leading Ciri through the door and down the main hallway. “We’re holding them off as best we can, but they’re trying to overwhelm us there while splitting their forces to attack other points of entry. They’re relying on the fact that their force is bigger than ours, and that we can’t be everywhere at once.”

She led Ciri into a small room off the side of the hallway. Once a cozy reading room, it had been transformed into a place of strategy, maps tacked over the bookcases and spread over the pushed-together tables. Several mages were hunched over one map, and Tissaia led Ciri over to join them.

“This shows the locations of all the current attacks,” she explained. “As you can see, there are several on the eastern and western walls, and—”

“What are you doing?”

One of the mages had looked up from the map, and was staring at Tissaia and Ciri with a look of utmost horror.

“Why have you brought a child into the war-room?”

“This is not just any child,” Tissaia said, resting a hand on Ciri’s shoulder. “This is the bard who rescued so many Northern prisoners, who turned Fringilla into a tree, who can mold the world around her with a single song. She has more power than any of you did at her age.”

“And she’s a child,” the mage insisted, face pinched. “You can’t just drag her into battle.”

“I didn’t drag her anywhere, Triss,” Tissaia said. “She volunteered. More than that, she asked me if she could come. Isn’t that right?”

Ciri nodded, drawing her chin up and banishing all thoughts of the noise and the smell.

“I want to help,” she said, impressed by the steadiness in her own voice. “And I _can_ help. So please let me.”

The mage—Triss—looked desperately at the other sorcerers gathered around the table.

“And you’re all okay with this?” she said, hands balling into fists.

None of them looked up from the map.

“I can’t believe you,” she said. “I can’t believe any of you, I—”

“Calm yourself,” Tissaia said, eyes flashing. “This war is no place for outbursts.”

Triss looked at her disbelievingly, then back at Ciri.

“Are you sure you want to be here?” she asked. “Cause if you’re not, I can take you somewhere safe right now.”

_Somewhere safe._ The cottage. Making potions with Yennefer, playing the lute with Juniper, talking quietly with Geralt. Just being with her family. She realized, with a cold, unwelcome rush of nausea, that she might never see them again. Might never get to see Geralt coming home from a successful contract with a triumphant grin, might never get to hear Juniper play his first new song, might never get to see what new and wild potion Yen would invent next.

Unless she took Triss up on her offer.

“She made her choice already,” Tissaia said.

“I’m not asking you,” Triss snapped, but Tissaia was right, wasn’t she? Ciri had made her choice. She’d made a commitment, a promise to her people that she was bound to the instant she was born.

“I want this,” she said, holding Triss’s gaze. Triss was the first one to break eye contact, wheeling around and storming out of the room.

“She’s always been empathetic,” Tissaia said. “And never quite understood that power can come in many different forms. Now, the map.”

She ran through the different points of attack that Nilfgaard had chosen, the largest by the main gate, two on the eastern wall near the river, and one on the southern wall near the forest.

“You would be best suited to one of the smaller attacks,” she said. “Allowing more of our forces to concentrate on the main threat.”

_How small is small?_ Ciri wanted to ask, but she couldn’t risk looking weak.

“That makes sense,” she said instead.

“You won’t be alone, of course. There are a handful of other mages split between the sites already.”

Only a handful of mages. There surely couldn’t be too many Nilfgaardians then.

“The only question is, where will you work best? River or forest?”

The forget-me-nots. The garden and fields at the cottage that had flourished whenever Ciri sang to them. Fringilla’s features twisting into juniper bark.

“The forest,” she said.

“Good choice.”

She waved her hand carelessly and another portal opened up, right in the middle of the room.

“This’ll take you there. Right at the edge of the woods, should be well enough away from the fighting that you won’t get overwhelmed.”

“Now?” Ciri squeaked, clutching her lute tighter to her chest. One of the other mages made a soft, worried sound, stepping away from the table.

“Tissaia—” he started.

“Yes, now,” Tissaia said, ignoring him. “Why wait? People are falling every minute that passes.”

“Tissaia, really—”

“And you aren’t getting any more powerful by waiting around here. So go. Use your chaos for something greater.”

Ciri took a deep breath, focusing on how it vibrated in her lungs, how it travelled through her body, how easily it could be turned into noise, into song. How easily it could be made into something powerful.

Into something greater.

And, before she could change her mind, she stepped into the swirling vortex of air.

***

The battlefield was nothing like their last raid on the castle. Not even close.

She stumbled out of the portal into a ringing wall of sound, the screams that explosions that had seemed so loud behind the wall now feeling like a tidal wave around her. For a moment, she just stood at the edge of the forest, wide-eyed and stunned, feeling just like the child that had run from Cintra as it burned, that had run from her father as he was made a prisoner. Scared and powerless.

Before her lay a huge swath of black, at least five hundred Nilfgaardians sending bombs flying at the walls, attempting to advance on the single mage and hundred-or-so Cintran soldiers trying to hold the line. Two more mages were trying to fight their way through Nilfgaard’s force from up close, attacking their flanks with blasts of fire. But they were clearly flagging, clearly exhausted as they shielded themselves from blow after blow.

And from where she was standing, she couldn’t join the line, couldn’t fight side by side with her people, couldn’t fight next to someone who would watch her back, who would warn her of an incoming blow or tell her what to do.

She had to fight alone.

_Take a deep breath. Gather your chaos. Take a deep breath. Listen to the world around you. Take a deep breath. Feel the song in your chest. Take a deep breath. Feel it in your fingers._

She stepped out from the protective shadow of the forest and strode towards the Nilfgaardian army, her chaos rising like a sob in her throat as her fingers flew over the strings, picking out the intro to the song she’d been working on for months. The song about her family.

_Take a deep breath and sing._

And she did.

Her chaos erupted from her and slithered across the battlefield, the grass growing taller it its wake, wildflowers blooming blood-red among the coarse stalks. Thorns carpeted the ground before her feet, a flimsy barrier between her and the knights, some of whom turned at the sound of her music, the feeling of her chaos.

Wolfsbane and juniper and lilac, lavender, marigolds, all the plants they’d ever grown in their garden. She kept them all in her mind as the wave of magic reached the first knight, thought of the people who had destroyed her home, and pictured them becoming part of it instead.

Fringilla had been able to talk as she turned into a tree, to laugh and protest and reach for her. These Nilfgaardians did not get that chance.

The bark crawled up their legs in the space of a single heartbeat, their arms morphed into branches in another, and in three seconds flat there were five new trees between her and the rest of the army. She hit the next chord and the carpet of thorns shifted forward, slithering up their trunks and between them, weaving the beginning of a barricade.

A scream echoed through the air, louder, somehow, than the din around it. She had the attention of at least a dozen soldiers now, staring at her, at the trees that used to be their fellows.

“It’s the fucking bard!” one man shouted and that drew the eye of still more soldiers, breaking rank and wheeling to face her. And how many were there, now? More than she had ever fought before, dozens of fully-armored knights against a thin covering of thorns.

_Sing._

Her fingers sped up on the lute, her voice grew louder, the chaos swirled thicker in the air. One knight howled in rage, charging forward with his sword high in the air. Her chaos welcomed him in, eating up his armor and sword and wide, frightened eyes in an instant. She did not think about those eyes, about the soldier’s fear. She did not think about the fact that she had just killed six men.

_Sing._

The chaos surged outwards, an eager, hungry thing. She didn’t look to see how many men joined her grove this time, letting her focus fall into the song.

_Sing._

There were screams, not of rage now, but of fear, of determination to survive. They echoed all around her, on all sides, and then there were trees around her, on all sides, weaving their branches together. And maybe she was safe, then, maybe she was safe in her cocoon of bark and leaves, but maybe she wasn’t.

_Sing._

So she kept singing. She kept singing because she needed to make herself safe, make her people safe. She kept singing because the song was stuck in her head, and in her throat, and she didn’t think it would ever leave her.

_Sing._

Her chaos screamed inside her, tore at her ribs and her bones, and it _burned,_ not like fire but like ice, like cold, dead winter come to freeze her blood.

_Sing._

And something was wrong, something was wrong, something was wrong, and she was becoming a burnt-out tree, just like Yennefer warned against, but the battle still screamed on beyond her cocoon and she couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop.

_Sing._

Couldn’t stop although her throat was raw.

_Sing._

Couldn’t stop although her fingers screamed in pain.

_Sing._

Couldn’t stop although her blood was freezing and burning and _wrong—_

_S—_

And something snapped. Something deep inside her chest, inside her soul and heart and mind. A strong, sturdy rope she didn’t even know was there, tethering her chaos down and making sure it couldn’t hurt her. It had been straining and straining all this time and now—

A scream tore itself from her throat and she was on the ground, staring up at the canopy of leaves and thorns above her. She was on the ground, and even though she wasn’t singing anymore, wasn’t making any sound at all, the plants were still growing and shifting, thorns growing longer and sharper, forget-me-nots covering the branches like mold.

Her chaos was bleeding from her like her heart was an open wound and she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t hold it, couldn’t—

She was dying, wasn’t she? That’s what this was. She had overstepped what she was capable of, and her magic had turned on her, and now she was—

She—

There was a wordless cry, an anguished noise that she thought came from herself, for a moment. But then came the sound of footsteps, came a strangled sob, came hands on her shoulders and how had someone gotten through the barrier, how—?

“Little bird, please, _please,_ open your eyes.”

And oh. That was how. The chaos didn’t force Yennefer into being part of her home because—well, she already was, wasn’t she?

Ciri cracked her eyes open—when had she closed them? And Yennefer was there, all wild violet eyes and fluttering hands. And so were Geralt and Juniper—and why were they all crying? Why were they all so sad? She had made an entire forest, shouldn’t they—?

“…proud of me?” she whispered and Juniper made a sound like someone had stabbed him.

“Of course we are,” Geralt said, stroking her hair. “Of course we are, but you can stop now. The soldiers are all dead.”

“Can’t,” she mumbled. “’S bleeding everywhere.”

“Fuck. _Fuck._ Yennefer, can you—”

But Yennefer was already slipping a hand under her back and propping her into a seated position. Her head lolled forward and someone was crying, someone was sobbing like the world was falling apart around them, and she couldn’t focus enough to see who it was.

“Just breathe this in, little bird,” Yennefer said, and her voice was shaking, shaking, _shaking._ “Breathe this in, and sleep for a little bit, okay?”

A potion under her nose. The sweet, clean smell of spring rain.

“Sleep.”

And she felt heavy, like the roots of her trees were holding her down.

“Sleep.”

And her family was here, so she was safe, right?”

“Sleep.”

So she slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi to me on [ tumblr! ](https://wingedquill.tumblr.com)


	24. Chapter 24

She blinked and the sky blurred above her. She blinked and tears spattered across her face. She blinked and her body jolted up and down, bouncing in a pair of warm arms.

“Hold on, little bird.” Yennefer’s voice, thin and frantic, somewhere to the side.

The chaos screamed inside her, wounded and furious, an animal intent on tearing its cage apart. And she thought that that cage might be her.

“M’sorry,” she slurred.

“No darling, no.” A hand on her head, cupping her tighter. Four fingers. _Juniper._ “You can tell us all how sorry you are after you get some rest, alright?”

“Can’t,” she mumbled, because she knew how this would end. She’d known as soon as she’d felt the magic crack inside her. In truth, she’d known as soon as she’d stepped onto the battlefield. “Dying.”

 _“No,”_ Geralt said, his voice choked and broken. More broken than it had been in Cintra. She wanted to turn her head, to seek him out, but she didn’t think she could move anymore. Everything felt numb except the magic eating away her heart.

“Love you,” she said. “Love you, love you.”

Juniper’s fingers found their way into her hair, pressing against her scalp like he could keep her in her body if he just held on tight enough.

“Stay with us,” he ordered, and Ciri blinked again.

***

The sky wasn’t moving anymore. The sky wasn’t even the sky anymore. Instead it was polished wood, arcing smoothly above her. She frowned. That didn’t seem right.

“Fix her. You brought her here, and you used her chaos, now fucking _help her.”_

She hadn’t ever heard Yennefer that angry before.

“I can’t.” A woman’s voice, cold and sad and familiar. Tissaia, right? That was her name? “Her chaos is eating her alive. Her body isn’t strong enough to contain it. It’s—it’s like keeping lightning in a bottle, Yennefer, have you taught this girl no control?”

“We’ve been working for _less than a year._ Don’t you _fucking dare_ blame this on me when you came into my _home_ and took my daughter to fight in your war.”

Her daughter.

Yennefer thought of her as her daughter.

She groaned, trying to push herself up and tell Yennefer that it wasn’t her fault. But Geralt was there, laying her back down, hands smoothing down her hair.

“Rest,” he told her, and his fingers were trembling.

“How was—contract?” she tried to ask him. He laughed, or maybe he sobbed. Ciri couldn’t tell.

“Good. It was good. We killed all the ghouls.”

“You’re—doing better.” Her words were slipping away, dancing on her tongue like bits of water. Ungraspable. But she had to tell him this. She had to tell him this before she died. “I—I’m proud—I’m so proud of you, Dad.”

He grabbed her hand in his, holding it against his heart. She could feel his chest jerking as he caught sob after sob in his throat.

“Not as proud as I am of you,” he managed to say.

“Nothing to be proud of,” she mumbled. “S’okay. M’okay.”

She couldn’t hold her eyes open for another second.

“She’s asleep,” Juniper whispered once they slipped close. There were fingers on her face, feather-light and searching, ghosting over her eyelids. Water followed in their wake, dripping steadily against her skin.

“Please,” Geralt begged, to her, to the gods, to no one at all. “Please, please, please.”

Another hand, against her face, another voice humming a low melody. A shifting of cloth, and Geralt’s sobbing grew muffled, like his face was pressed against something.

“Shh,” Juniper murmured. “Shh. She’ll be alright. She’ll be—she’ll be just fine.”

He was lying. But that was okay. Geralt needed a lie right now.

She thought, vaguely, that she should be more upset that she was dying. That she should scream and rage and fight against the chaos eating up her heart, that she should wail at the loss of all she had yet to do. But she couldn’t summon up the energy to feel more than exhausted.

And then—

“I told you she should have been brought to Aretuza.” 

The man’s voice grated across Ciri’s ears, brain, spine. It was regretful, but a gloating kind of regret. A “told you so” kind of regret. She couldn’t remember who this was, either, but she knew that she didn’t like him.

Geralt and Juniper’s hands froze on her skin.

“ _You,”_ Juniper snarled. “What the fuck are you doing here, Stregobor?”

“You _brought_ him here?” Yen snapped at the woman. “After he wanted to just let Nilfgaard take the North—after his _niece—?”_

“I have seen the error of my ways,” Stregobor said, still with that same steady, lying regret. Juniper laughed, shrill and humorless.

“Have you?” he asked. His hand vanished from Ciri’s skin, and she forced her eyes open. Juniper had shifted to stand in front of her and Geralt, his arms spread slightly outwards, like he was trying to shield them.

Stregobor frowned.

“I expected The Butcher to have a quarrel with me,” he said. “Though perhaps he cannot tell who I am.”

“I have ears,” Geralt growled.

Stregobor laughed, and Ciri wanted to pull herself off the table and strike him across the face. But she was too heavy, too exhausted. Too cut off from own body.

“That you do,” he agreed. He turned back to Juniper. “But what issue do _you_ take with me, witcher?”

“You don’t remember me?”

Juniper’s voice was bordering on hysterical as he stepped forward, as he put his hand on the hilt of his sword. Stregobor’s brow furrowed.

“Careful,” he said, flicking his fingers. The air felt thicker, simmering with chaos that dripped from every bit of oxygen like condensed water. Ciri’s own chaos howled in reply, clawing at her heart in its wild attempt to escape her chest.

“My name is Juniper of Temeria,” Juniper continued, undeterred by the magic weighing them down like a leaden blanket. “Does that ring a fucking bell?”

Stregobor blinked. Blinked again.

“Juniper of Temeria,” he murmured. “Yes. It does. I suppose it has been twenty years, hasn’t it?”

It took a moment for it to process in Ciri’s mind.

Twenty years.

Twenty years.

The twenty year undoing.

The twenty-year-long curse that had ripped away Juniper’s past and given him a human life.

The twenty-year-long curse that had given him music, adoration, love, _happiness,_ and then snatched it away like it had never existed.

Had—

Had this man—?

 _“You?”_ Geralt growled. “You’re the one who cursed him?”

Yennefer snarled in the back of her throat, coming to stand next to Juniper. She raised her hands in warning.

“Stay right there,” she said. “Don’t take another step.”

“What did you do?” Tissaia asked from her place by the door. “Stregobor, what did you _do?_ What magic have you been—”

“I’ve only done what was necessary,” Stregobor said primly, flicking his wrist. The chaos grew even heavier. Ciri’s chest broke a bit more. “To keep this world safe from the Black Sun.”

“In what way was cursing me _necessary?”_ Juniper asked. “In what way was shattering Geralt’s reputation necessary?”

Stregobor sighed.

“Witchers. You’re short-sighted as you are brutish. I can’t expect you to understand.”

“Watch yourself,” Yennefer said.

“And how do you expect to harm me?” Stregobor asked. “With your chaos as shattered as it is? You’d blow this entire building to rubble. Kill me, yes, but also everyone you love in one fell swoop.”

He stepped closer. The chaos rolled over them like a fog, thick and cold and blinding.

“I just need the girl,” he said.

“Like _hell,”_ roared Juniper, unsheathing his sword. Geralt’s hand vanished from Ciri’s skin as he drew his blade as well.

“I already told you no,” Tissaia said. Her voice was quiet but no less furious, no less demanding.

“And I suppose Cintra will survive just fine without this assistance of Ban Ard?” Stregobor retorted. He bunched his hand into a fist. When he uncurled his fingers, they were gleaming with yellow light, horrid and sickly, the color of rancid vomit and trampled flowers.

Juniper went very still. His sword wavered in the air, like his hands were shaking around the hilt. _Move,_ Ciri told herself as her chaos screamed inside her. _He’s going to hurt your family, **move.**_

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Tissaia demanded, stalking forward. Stregobor ignored her.

“Don’t worry,” he told Juniper. “It won’t work on you twice. But if you don’t give me the girl, well.” He tilted his head, and his gleaming eyes flicked over to Geralt. “What do you think it would give back to the Butcher? His humanity or his sight?”

“Don’t fucking _touch him!”_

Several things happened at once.

Juniper dove forward, sword at the ready. Tissaia raised her hands, sending lightning crackling over the surface of her skin. Yennefer’s hand dove into her pocket, yanking out a potion.

And Geralt hollered out a warning.

_“Juniper, no!”_

The chaos in the room seized, the potential energy shattered with a single flick of Stregobor’s finger, rushing in and in and in, a flying rush of pure magic aimed straight at Juniper.

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t move, couldn’t sing, couldn’t even scream. All she had was the furious magic determined to dig a hole through her chest.

She reached inside herself, grabbed a hold of the ember beating in time with her heart, and urged it onwards, faster, _come on, rip me to pieces, tear me to shreds, just—_

***

Her heart tore in two.

***

Someone screamed. A man, she thought. He sounded like he was being burned alive.

***

Juniper—

What happened to Juniper—?

***

Arms folded around her, and then she wasn’t on the table anymore. She was dangling in the air, head cradled carefully, legs hanging down. Was it Stregobor? Was Stregobor taking her?

“Oh gods,” Juniper’s voice echoed above her. He was alive. He was okay. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh _gods.”_

She’d saved him.

Her life had been good for something after all.

“What happened to her?” Geralt choked. “What _happened,_ what’s wrong—?”

The arms that held her started shaking.

“I can smell rot, _what’s_ _wrong?”_

“She’s breathing,” Yennefer said. “She’s breathing, I—I have an idea. Tissaia, portal.”

“Yennefer—”

“Portal. _Now._ Or I swear to all the gods I will raze your precious school to _dust.”_

***

The magic felt like a knife against her skin.

Or against her, anyway. She wasn’t sure if she had skin anymore.

***

She was home.

She was home.

She was out of Cintra, but she was _home,_ surrounded by the scent of Yennefer’s laboratory, the faint lullaby of birdsong out in the fields.

Yennefer started talking, voice fast and urgent, and Ciri felt like she should be paying attention. Like this was important.

But she was home. And her family was safe and whole and all around her. This was a good way to die.

She let herself drift.

***

“—think I might be able to recreate—”

***

“We can’t. We can’t do this to her, we _can’t—”_

“Juniper, please—”

“We can’t _do this.”_

***

Tears, dripping on her forehead.

“Ciri? Ciri, can you hear me, little bird?”

She didn’t think her throat worked enough for words. Not anymore. It didn’t even work enough for her to groan. And her eyes didn’t work enough for her to open them.

“Please wake up, we need to talk to you.”

She wanted to see them one last time. Wanted to fix their faces in whatever memory she would carry with her beyond life.

“Please, just for a minute—I— _please,_ we don’t want to make this choice for you.”

The world was a warm wash of black and she couldn’t focus.

***

“We can’t, we can’t, we fucking _can’t,_ Geralt.”

“We have to.”

“Thirty percent, only thirty percent even _survive_ this.”

“It’s better than nothing.”

“ _Please—”_

“I’m not _losing her again.”_

***

Crying and crying and crying like the world was ending, crying like all the oceans were trapped in their eyes, crying like they were losing the most precious things to them.

And that didn’t make sense, did it? They’d already lost those, hadn’t they? Geralt’s sight, Juniper’s humanity, Yennefer’s magic—

What was so much worse?

***

“I’m so sorry.”

A hand holding hers like her bones would shatter if it gripped too hard. A finger against her cheek, so light she wasn’t even sure it was there.

“I’m so, _so_ sorry that we’re doing this to you.”

***

Cold glass against her lips. A hand cupping the back of her head, more on her shoulders and back, holding her up. Making her look like something other than a corpse.

“Drink,” a voice whispered. “Just drink. It’ll be alright.”

The burning started before the potion even made it to her stomach, but her mouth didn’t work enough to scream.

“It’ll be alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearing the end, folks! Just another chapter or two and this'll be doneeeeee~


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the last chapter, y'all! :') I am strangely emotional about this, this fic is like my baby. I am continuing to write in the Witcher fandom though, so if you want to read more of my stuff, there's plenty on my profile!
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me for so long, and for reading this entire thing. <3

The fire burned for a minute. The fire burned for an eternity. Ciri wasn’t sure if she existed anymore, or if she’d become one of the dancing flames, burning and flickering until the world gave up on her. Her lungs were ash, and her blood was molten rock, and she wasn’t a person anymore. She knew that down to her charcoal bones. Whatever made her human had fled her in a column of smoke, and all that was left was—

_Juniper, guiding her fingers over his lute._

_Geralt, trusting her to show him the way home._

_Yennefer, helping her grow things and make things and become things._

—all that was left was her heart.

She held onto it, that little patch of forest at the core of her, clung to it with all she had and refused to let the flames burn it away. A graceful wolf with milky golden eyes prowling over a carpet of lightning-scorched lilac, shaded by a swaying crown of juniper berries.

She would not let it go.

She would not let _them_ go.

The flames licked at the edges of that peaceful forest, reaching for the trees and flowers and fierce protector. The fire laughed at her defiance. _We have taken every other piece of you,_ it said. _What makes you think you’ll get to keep this?_

She drew her chaos in around the forest, blanketing the treetops with a shield of song. Their song. Their ballad, the one that she had spent weeks and weeks planning, composing, fine-tuning. She’d lost most of the words to the fire, but the tune was still there, beating against the woods like a second heart.

It was fierce and scared and hopeful all at once. It was grief and joy and the promise to do better, be better, love better. It was them. It was all of them.

It was _her._

She faced the flames and bared her teeth.

 _Because they’ve kept me,_ she snarled. _Through everything I’ve done, through everything they’ve lost, they’ve kept me. And you don’t get to rob me of the honor of keeping them back._

The fire descended. She let the song flow through her. Let it repeat and build. And she burned. Cintra burned. Her humanity burned.

The forest did not

***

Hours and days and centuries later, the flames started to burn lower. Lower. All out of fuel, all done with her. She still kept her chaos drawn tightly over the forest, protecting her heart from any opportunistic sparks. But the world beyond the burning started to seep into her awareness. Gentle strokes through her hair, fingers clenched in hers, a thumb smoothing over her ankle. Little spots of coolness peppering the hot coals of her skin.

Their voices filtered in next, as the roar of the fire dimmed to a soft hum.

First Juniper, right by her ear, not pausing or faltering in the gentle drag of his fingers through her hair.

“That’s it darling, that’s it. It’s almost over, you’re through the worst of it now. You’re almost out, you’re almost safe, just keep breathing, alright?”

Then Yennefer, and now Ciri realized that the hand in hers was smaller than those of her fathers, more delicate, calloused from gardening supplies, not swords.

“You don’t get to escape our lessons that easily, little bird. You don’t get to escape _our family_ that easily. Because we love you, and we care about you, and we aren’t letting you go.”

And finally, Geralt. His voice was lower than the others. Softer, and he was farther away, so it took her a while to pick out his voice over the popping coals. His declaration to her was simple. Repetitive.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

A chant. A prayer. A promise that she’d been given again and again, a promise that she’d never really let herself believe.

But now, she was burning. Now, she was something less than what she’d been. Now, she might never be useful again, never make up for what she’d done.

And they were still there.

Geralt was still there.

“I love you. I love you.”

She swallowed the coals in her mouth and breathed out ash.

“I believe you,” she croaked.

***

There was a flurry of motion after that, hands fluttering across her skin, dragging cool cloths in their wake. Another hand behind her head, lifting it up. Glass against her lips. She pursed them tight, not wanting the fire to come back.

“It’s just water, little bird,” Yennefer murmured. Her voice was broken around the edges, and the glass shook against Ciri’s lips. “Just water, I promise.”

Perhaps the water would put out the remaining embers. She cracked open her lips and welcomed it in. A bit too eagerly, perhaps, as it spilled over the edges of her mouth and dripped down her chin. Cloth dragged over her skin, mopping up the droplets.

“That’s it,” Yennefer said as she kept drinking, suddenly aware of how _thirsty_ she was. “That’s it, careful you don’t choke.”

“Wh’ happ’n?” she mumbled between sips.

“You burnt yourself out,” Yennefer explained. “On the battlefield. And then when you turned Stregobor’s magic back in on itself, it just—it hurt you. Badly.”

Stregobor. The man that had cursed Juniper, that had tried to do the same to Geralt.

“Is he—?”

“Dead. Quite spectacularly. Drink. I’ll explain the rest when you can sit up on your own.”

Perhaps it was the water, or perhaps it was her parents’ encouraging words, but the fire ebbed more and more each second. By the time Yennefer pulled the glass away from her lips, it had died entirely, leaving Ciri full of wet ash and rock. The burning was gone, and only a heavy, bone-deep ache was left in its place. She was singed and burnt away and—

 _New._ She felt new.

Cautiously, she started to peel her shield away from her heart, leaving it open to the barren landscape that was the rest of her. The wolf slipped to the edge of the lilac field, sniffing in the soot-filled air. Berries rained down from the juniper trees, plopping into the ash. They would take root there, she knew. They would grow, if she let them. The lilac would grow too. The wolf would be safe and wild.

She pulled her awareness up and up, out of her heart, let it soar over the ashes of the person she used to be. A life she would never live again. She thought that she should be mourning it somehow, mourning the girl that used to be made of all this ash.

But all she felt was that strange, wonderful, _terrifying_ newness.

“Are her eyes open?" Geralt asked. She could practically feel the nervous energy pouring off of him.

“Not yet,” Juniper said. His fingers slipped over her cheek. “Can you do that for us, Ciri? Can you open your eyes?”

It felt like trying to lift a mountain. Like trying to slog through a lake’s worth of waist-high mud. But Juniper wanted her to open her eyes. So she fought the heaviness of her own body as fiercely as she had fought to protect her heart. And little by little, she eased her eyelids open.

The world was _bright._ She slammed them shut again, moaning in pain. Too bright, too much, it _hurt._

“Shit, Yen, close the windows,” Juniper said. She heard scrambling footsteps, slamming shutters, a racing heartbeat. Huh. She didn’t think she should be able to hear that last one. Just like she was pretty sure sunlight shouldn’t burn her eyes like molten metal. Just like she shouldn’t be able to feel every whorl of Juniper’s fingerprint as his thumb traced over her jaw.

“I’m sorry about that, sweetheart,” Juniper murmured, and there was something—different about his voice. It was richer almost, shot through with vibrations that soared above and below it, making each word sound like a song. “I forgot the world can be a little overwhelming at first.”

_Forgot. At first._

Oh.

Witchers had senses like this. Didn't they?

“’M I like you?” she asked.

Juniper’s breath hitched in his lungs. Geralt’s thumb paused in its smooth movement over her ankle. Yennefer’s heart ratcheted up another notch.

Why were they all so nervous?

She frowned, and tried her eyes again. The world hurt less to look at this time, and as she blinked, the bright, blurry shapes resolved themselves into her family.

They all looked like shit. Hair sticking up every which way, red-rimmed eyes ringed with dark circles, shaking hands and tear-streaked cheeks. Like they’d been crying for a week straight. All because of her.

Her heart ached in her chest. She’d never wanted them to love her enough that she could hurt them. But they had. And she had.

 _I’m sorry,_ she almost said. _I’m so sorry._

But she’d apologized so many times. She’d apologized in so many ways. And every single time, it had only caused them more hurt. This time, her guilt had almost buried her, had almost destroyed them.

So. Something else. Something better.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Geralt flinched as though struck. Juniper laughed, high pitched and hysterical.

“For what?” he asked. “For _what?_ We should be—we should be begging for your forgiveness, you shouldn’t be _thanking_ us—”

“You saved my life,” she said.

Yennefer growled, snatching something off the table nearest to her and stalking back over to Ciri.

“We did _this to you,”_ she said, and her voice held just as much self-loathing as Ciri’s had, the day that she’d screamed at Geralt in the woods. She thrust her hand out, spinning around the mirror she was holding so that Ciri could see it.

Could see herself.

Could see the lightning scars of shattered chaos spidering over her skin.

Could see the yellow eyes set into her face.

She blinked and the reflection blinked. She raised her heavy hand to her cheek and the reflection followed. She smiled, and the reflection lit up with happiness.

“I look like you,” she said. “All of you. I look like your daughter.”

The guilty fury on Yennefer’s face faltered. Juniper slumped down, burying his face in his hands. Geralt brought a fist up to his mouth, stifling a sob.

“You’re not upset?” he asked, his voice cracked through with tears.

“No,” she said, leaning forward with a wince. “ _Gods,_ no.”

She wrapped her arms around him and spoke into his shoulder.

“One of my fathers is a witcher. The other is a witcher and a bard. My mother—she’s a mage. The best mage the world has ever seen. A talented alchemist, a brilliant inventor. They’re all— _you’re all—_ so strong. And I get to be like all of you. Why would I be upset about that?”

His shoulders jerked beneath her grip, his body shaking with silent sobs. But he brought his arms up to hug her back.

“I’m not ashamed of any of you,” she said, keeping her voice as firm as she could through the exhaustion. “And I’m not ashamed of who I am now. I’m not ashamed of being your daughter.”

A weight hit the bed next to her. Yennefer’s lilac-and-ozone scent wrapped around her like a hug, and an actual hug wasn’t far behind.

“I’m not quite sure what I did to deserve a daughter like you,” she huffed. “But whatever it is, I hope I can keep doing it.”

Juniper stayed where he was.

“We took your choice,” he said, and his voice was wet. “We took your _humanity_.”

“You made an impossible decision to save my life,” she said. “It’s not your fault. And if it is—if it is, I forgive you. I _like_ being like this, Juniper. Honest.”

The bed shifted, and a strong pair of arms wrapped around all of them, holding them close.

“You might not think that a week from now,” Juniper said.

“Then that’s a problem for a week from now,” Ciri replied. Geralt laughed, his shoulders rumbling under her forehead.

“She’s got you there, June,” he said.

“I suppose she does,” Juniper sighed. He dropped a kiss onto the crown of Ciri’s head. “But I need to tell you something, Ciri, can you look at me?”

She lifted her head from Geralt’s shoulder. Juniper slid off the bed and knelt down in front of it, holding her gaze.

“You have given more than enough of yourself to the world,” he said. “And I— _we—_ don’t want you to give any more of it. Not for a very, _very_ long time. Okay?”

She bit her lip.

The guilt was still there. The sense of obligation was still there. She didn’t think it would ever leave. Some part of herself would always feel responsible for what had happened to Geralt. For what had happened to her grandmother. For what had happened—was _still_ happening—to Cintra.

But she wasn’t Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon anymore. She was just Ciri of Rivia, of Temeria, of Vengerberg. She wasn’t a princess anymore. She was a witcher, a mage, a bard.

A child.

She was just a child.

And the thought of going back onto another battlefield terrified her. The thought of facing Nilfgaard again terrified her.

Maybe it was time to listen to that fear. Maybe it was time, just for a little while, to be selfish. To be innocent again.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Alright.”

Juniper smiled.

“In that case,” he said. “Why don’t we go north? Get away from the war. We could hide out in Kaer Morhen for a bit. I know you’ve got some uncles who’d be very excited to meet you.”

“And a grandfather.” Geralt said. He took a deep breath. “We should have gone there a long time ago. I have some—I have some things I need to tell him. Tell all of them, really.”

“So do I,” Juniper said. “Lambert has kicked my ass far too many times over the years. It’ll be nice to return the favor.”

“I guess I’ll come along,” Yennefer sighed, like she wouldn’t follow them anywhere. “I’ve heard there’s quite the treasure trove of alchemical tomes, even if it _is_ in the middle of nowhere.”

She would miss Yennefer’s cottage. But she was a burnt out landscape, ready to be born anew. And it would be nice to have more people to help shape her. More family to cover up the ash, more wolves to run alongside the one already tucked into her heart.

“North sounds good,” she said with a grin. “North sounds really, really good.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [by god still am](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23951494) by [ruffboi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruffboi/pseuds/ruffboi)




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